


Unavoidable

by K91



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Crimes & Criminals, F/M, Past Abuse, Rape Recovery, Romance, Shooting Guns, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-04-24 09:25:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 15
Words: 32,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19170421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K91/pseuds/K91
Summary: This is formatted like one long and ultra dramatic episode. Let's call it a two part season finale.





	1. Chapter 1

"Wow. Executive Assistant District Attorney. Barba. Thats... there is no one that deserves it more."

They were seated on his couch, in his office. She had been meaning to stop by all week, ever since he had officially started the position. They had spoken a few times since it was announced that he had received the title, but Olivia's stomach felt light everytime she thought about actually seeing him. So she had put it off. It was late now, but she had walked into his office on impulse, deciding to just push past the first encounter so they could move forward. But he had been happy when she had appeared at his door, unfurling himself from the legal pad and standing up with a smile. There was some momentary hesitation when they both realized that shaking hands was too formal, and that hugging seemed... well neither of them had moved in for the hug. She settled on placing her hands on his shoulders. They had both smiled at eachother for a long moment, her feeling it all the way down into her stomach.

"Drink?" He shrugged.

She laughed. "God yes." 

Now they were seated on his couch, in his office, their knees touching a little as they talked over his new position. 

"How you feeling with all this, being back?" She tilted her head at him, attempted to catch his eye.

He ran a finger down his nose, placed his drink on the table. Avoided her gaze. "I'm actually ok. It was... rough for a while." Her heart squeezed. "But it lead to some meaningful work, and I just... I realized...-" 

"That you need to be in a courtroom?" She kept her gaze steady. 

He paused, looking at her the way he did sometimes, like she might be a wizard. Smiled. Looked back at his hands. "So, how's... ugh. Sounds so ordinary. How's life? Hows Noah? How's Liv?" 

She paused, really looking at him. She looked down his arms, back up his chest and to his face. Sighed. They weren't going to address what was said on the courthouse steps. That didn't shock her. He was an avoider. So she took a breath, steadied herself.

"We're both good. He's in second grade now. He used the word opinion the other day." She smirked. "He blows me away."

His eyes flicked over to hers and away before she could hold them. He focused on his hands which were loosely clasped in front of him. "You dont give yourself enough credit. He picks up things like that because of you."

Her heart warmed at the sentiment. She spent so much time agonizing over every decision regarding Noah. He clearly remembered that and it endeared her that he still made a habit of reassuring her. She always trusted his judgment. 

She felt him growing tense at her scrutiny so she switched gears, determined to adhere to the detached affectionate tone that he had set. 

"Dodds filled me in on People v. Stafford. His head looked like it was about to explode when he told me about the DA's reaction. Barba, I cant believe you're taking this on."

He smirked fully, running his hand up and down his forearm in a subconscious gesture to expel some the anticipatory energy. 

"Oh I'm aware of the reaction from the governor's office. I've had no less than four calls today."

She saw the excitement in his eyes, she could see him already formulating his plans. Three steps ahead as always. 

"Help me understand. How are you charging William Stafford for marital rape when he wasn't Chelsea Manor's husband? Dodds had no details, and he indicated that you were crazy."

His eyes snapped to hers and he finally looked at her. Her stomach flipped. "I'm not crazy. I'm going to argue that Chelsea Manor was raped by a culture."

Her mouth physically dropped a little.

"Ra-Barba. How?"

His whole body seemed a little energized, and he moved a little, his shoulders rolling while he looked at her with the slightly unhinged gaze of a man who knew he could do something that seemed impossible. It struck her that it had been a while since she had seen that expression on his face.

"There are documented discussions and emails between Stafford and Manor in which she expressed the desire to not be constantly sexually available to her husband's every whim. Stafford uses the tenets of Christian marriage to coerce and manipulate Manor into submitting to her husband's sexual will. He even goes so far as to say that a wife who does not submit to her husband in every way will be damned. Turns out Manor's husband liked a little BDSM." He muttered the last part, offering a wicked grin. Her stomach rolled again. "Manor gets sent to the hospital beaten with vaginal contusions and a bruised neck from the dog collar." She winced, her heart squeezing for this woman.

She nodded. "And you want to charge her priest with...?"

He turned completely. Their knees were touching. He lifted his jaw. Smirked. "I charged him with Rape ll."

She felt herself inexplicably smiling back at him despite the nature of their conversation. He looked... like his old self. Cocky and arrogant, with just enough heart to make the bravado tolerable. She shook her head and let her fingers briefly brush his knee. 

"Counselor you're a little nuts, but if you can force a shift in the culture of consent I'm all for it."

"Oh I can. My apartment looks like a drunken meeting between the founding fathers with the amount of law books I have laid out right now." He paused. "I can do this."

She held his gaze, her head subconsciously nodding a little. She knew he could. He started to stand, so she followed suit. It was getting late and she could tell by the slightly faraway look in his eye that he was already thinking about something, working something through. 

They stood in tandem so when they were fully standing they were inches from the other. He automatically began to step back.

"Tomorrow I migh-"

She had leaned in, one hand grabbing his shirt. She crushed her mouth to his before she even thought it through. She tasted scotch. She knew she would. He made a strangled noise and she bit his lip. She stepped closer to him and her hands slid up his neck, fingers grazing the hair there. She wasnt even thinking, going on instinct as her tongue pushed into his mouth and the noise he made shot right through her. His hands had been hovering in the air from the shock of her kiss but they both moved after that, instinctively grabbing her waist and dragging her so close to him that their hips crashed into eachother. She groaned and ground herself into him. She needed- 

Abruptly she ripped herself from him, took a whole step back, one hand flying to her mouth. He looked completely shocked, his own hand meeting his reddened mouth, then rubbing down his jaw. He took a step toward her, stopped.

She was the first one to find some air. 

"I am so sorry. I have no idea- I didnt plan to." She took a breath. "Rafael. I'm sorry."

He was still gaping at her when she turned and rushed from his office.


	2. Chapter 2

Olivia sat at her desk, ran a hand over her face. She took her glasses off and tossed them down, leaned back in her chair. She couldn't believe she- no. She willed herself to let it go. It was pointless to sit there and kick herself over something she couldn't change. It happened. She kissed him in his office with the blinds on the window open, where Carmen or anyone could have walked in and seen. Idiot.

She could still feel his hands on her back.

Her fingers flexed, almost going into her hair, physically willing her mind to push the memory away. She had to stop. She apologized and they hadn't spoken since. That had to be enough. She couldn't change the action but she could move forward and behave professionally. She thought this through more times in the days since than she would like to admit, and felt the best thing for them both and the integrity of their jobs was to ignore it. She had already acknowledged that the kiss shouldn't have happened and she was confident that if she let it go then he would as well. He was never one to instigate intimacy. Her stomach did a small flip at the thought. She took a breath. Willed herself to stop.

"You look deep in thought." 

She looked up to see Dodds standing in her office door with a friendly smile on his face. She fought the rise of embarrassment over how different her thoughts were from what the Chief assumed she was thinking about.

"Chief. I wasn't expecting you. What can I help you with?" 

"I have a meeting with the DA's, wanted to see if you would join me."

She started to rise, grabbing her jacket off the back of her chair. 

"Im sorry, I didnt know we had a meeting-"

He waved a hand, shook his head to ward off her apology.

"We didn't, but I think you and I need to present a united front here. If Barba is going to bring People v. Stafford to trial he needs an airtight case, and if he doesn't have one I may need your influence."

She dropped her coat. Picked it back up.

"Oh. I didn't... I wasn't involved in this case, Chief. I was working the charter school sex ring so I kicked this back to Carisi. He can-"

"I get that but you're his commanding officer so if he arrested Stafford it was on your watch."

There was a slight edge to his voice. She knew that this case was stirring up controversy. Dodds hated controversy. She didn't bother to explain that Carisi had arrested Stafford on lewd behavior charges because he had been masterbating in the next room while Manor brutalized his wife. Dodds didn't care. 

His expression softened a little at her hesitation. 

"I understand you have a... history with Barba." She forced herself not to wince. "But this case is going to reflect poorly on all of us and we can't take the hit right now. I know you want justice for Ms. Manor, and of course I do too. But if Barba is reckless with this case then she won't get it."

"He isn't reckless. He's meticulous." She sighed, briefly held up a hand before Dodds could argue. "But I see what you're saying. She deserves justice. But I don't know how much help I'll be." She ignored the look he gave her, like they both knew the effect she had on the prosecutor. "So we should take Carisi. To be clear, I am not participating in a shake down. We'll work together." 

"That's all I can ask."


	3. Chapter 3

She was the first person off the elevator, and because she was looking for it she saw his reaction through the blinds. His feet had been perched up on his desk but they fell to the floor and he was half risen out of his chair when he spotted Dodds and then Carisi. He sat back down.

Dodds was friendly enough throughout the meeting but Barba's expression didn't really change from one of mild disgust at the chief's attempt dissuade his plans.

"Counselor, I'm as glad as anyone that you're back, you have an excellent convict rate, but I just think this radical approach could cost this girl some justice." The chief was leaned back in one the chairs facing Barba's desk, with his right foot comfortably resting on his left knee. He smiled and briefly looked at Carisi and Olivia as though to demonstrate that everyone was in agreement.

Barba stared at the chief, one hand mindlessly playing with the pen in his hand. He hadn't looked at Olivia since she had walked into the room, but his gaze flicked toward her now. She froze where she had been pacing behind Dodds's chair. He apparently saw what he was looking for because he looked away from her and back to Dodds.

"Well," he leaned forward, the pen slipping from his hand so his fingers could stab in his desk, "if I have such an excellent conviction rate then you have nothing to worry about." 

Dodds tensed, but his political mind forced his temper from simmering. He shifted, no longer at ease, and sat up straighter. Curled the fist on his knee when Barba smirked. 

"This guy is a prominent figure. He's the mayor's priest for God's sake. Don't you think charging the man with rape for giving spiritual guidance is a little bit of a stretch?" 

Barba was still leaning toward Dodds but that last comment had his eyes snapping toward Olivia. She stopped in her tracks at Dodds's assessment, looking back at Barba. Her stomach churned a little. 

"Ah forgive me Chief, but masterbating while her husband brutalizes her didn't exactly reinforce Chelsea Manor's relationship with God." Carisi rubbed the back of his head, already regretting opening his mouth without thinking. There was a long pause, and the silence proved too much for Carisi to bear. He hesitated, but Barba cocked an eyebrow and said nothing.

Carisi took one step forward. "People v. Parcell. Katy Miller's rape by "The Monster" was facilitated by Heather Parcell. And this case goes beyond that to sexual involvement with the masturbation. You could argue gang rape-" Barba's hand came up just a little, two fingers signaling to other man to stop talking.

But Barba met Carisi's eye, held it for a second. Looked back at Dodds. "Maybe the governor should start looking for a new church." He stood up. "Unless you're interested in helping me fine tune my case I really need to be getting back to it." The men stood, shook hands. As Dodds passed Olivia he shot her a look from under his eyebrows. So she had been about as helpful as she thought she was. She sighed, ran her hands through her hair. When she looked back at Barba he was staring at her. He immediately looked away. Shuffled some papers on his desk. 

She made her way toward the door, determined to beat Carisi to the elevator. 

"He stays." He was still looking down at his papers, but one hand lazily flicking toward Carisi with two fingers extended out.

She looked back. Carisi was still in the middle of the room, looking as puzzled as she felt. "Me? Why?" Barba looked up at the other man, pursed his lips a little and shook his head. His body didn't move but his eyes came back to rest on Olivia. She felt warm.

"You," his hand waved, encompassing her and the departed Chief Dodds as one, "want an airtight case, I need him and his three year old law degree." his eyes flicked back to Carisi and the younger man's face registered the insult, "Dust yourself off Fordham Law." 

She took a step back, her body still angled toward the door. She was about to resist when her eyes landed on Carisi's face and she saw it. He wanted to work the case. It wasn't the first time it occured to her that his loyalty had extended his tenure at SVU for three years. 

She didn't look at Barba, but turned toward Carisi. Raised her eyebrow. Saw it there on his face. "It doesn't interfere with any of your investigative work. The minute it does you're done." He bobbed his head up and down, and she felt a stab of guilt that she hadn't seen that level of enthusiasm from him in a while. 

She looked back at Barba, standing behind his desk and bracing his hands on its surface. He was staring at her mouth, but jerked his head down toward his desk, sniffed a little.

"Thank you for your time, Lieutenant."


	4. Chapter 4

"He explicitly says in order to redeem her sole in heaven she must submit to her husband's sexual will. That's spiritual manipulation. That should be enough."

Carisi was standing, having abandoned his post on the couch to pace his nervous energy away. He held prints of the emails between Manor and Stafford, parsing each sentence to try and come up with something damning. He needed a break from the case law.

Barba didn't look up. He was scribbling on a legal pad, his desk a mess of packets and papers.

"How do you prove mens rea?" He sounded bored, and a little irritated.

Carisi stopped pacing, bristled under it.

"Why are you asking me questions you already know the answer too?" 

Instead of getting angry like the detective hoped, Barba looked up, rolled his eyes. Finished scribbling. With a flourish, he finished the last sentence and dropped his pen. 

"You're right." His hands folded on his desk, he smiled genially. Carisi was already regretting this. "I'll ask you questions I don't already know the answers to. Why are you still frittering away time at SVU? It's been three years."

Carisi's face reddened. His feet shifted around.

"I haven't been... frittering. Jesus Barba, I investigate sensitive sex crimes."

"Not good enough." His face was still passive, his hands still folded. 

"I do use my degree. I worked with Stone on a few cases..."

He remained still, but his mouth turned up slightly into a passive sneer. 

"So you're Ken Doll's lap dog. Ah." He resumed scribbling.

"Screw you."

Barba placed the pen back down, looked back up at Carisi with an expression on his face like he was mildly impressed that a dog had learned to sit. Carisi was already pissed at himself. He knew the prosecutor well enough to know that he had just walked right into his trap, and reacted the exact way that Barba wanted him too.

"Don't like that I called you the lapdog of 'Arthur Balfour', or don't like that let yourself be the lapdog of the Marquess of Salisbury's nephew?" He leaned back in his chair, rested his hands on his stomach. Muttered, "Bob's you're uncle." 

Carisi, shifted again. "Come on, Stone was good, that wasn't all nepotism."

Barba regarded him silently with a look Carisi couldn't identity. Shook his head.

"You're too smart to waste your brain and talent on fear or paralysis." 

He said it quietly, but had leaned forward in his chair, intensely scrutinizing the detective.

Carisi's hand that held the papers just dropped to his side. Caught off guard he stared for a minute. Barba lost his nerve, grabbed his pen and went back to work.

"I'm not scared. I'm... working."

"You're scared." He didn't even look back up. 

The anger welled, but Carisi stopped, crossed his arms over his chest, willed his anger back down. Anger clouded your judgment, and Barba never lost arguments because he never got angry.

"How am I scared? Because I work at SVU with people that matter to me doing work that matters?" 

Barba dropped his pen again, looking a little put upon. Sighed, rested his face on his hand and looked back at Carisi like they were discussing the weather.

"I'll counter with a better question. What's the difference between you and Stone? What makes him anymore capable than you are? Why was he sitting in this office," he sneered, "aside from the obvious nepotism, over you? You have experience, you have the degree, and you have the skill." He leaned forward a little, two of his fingers resting on the desk. "The only difference I see is backbone." Held his gaze.

"I chase down criminals and I'm the one who's spineless? You can-"

He flicked his hand, effectively shutting Carisi up. "A deflection and we both know it. No one's questioning your bravery, detective. I'm just curious why you got that discount degree if you weren't going to use it." He deflated a little, rubbed his eyes to ward off his exhaustion and regret. 

Sighed. "Go home Carisi. Its late."

Carisi shifted again, stared at the man sitting behind the desk. Briefly felt three years younger. Remembered the thrill of working cases that seemed overwhelmingly hard while Barba pushed him, relentlessly expecting perfection from him. 

"You think I'm talented?" 

"Oh Jesus." 

Carisi smiled, didn't move. He was always better at social intimacy. He won in this arena.

Barba sighed, looked back up the detective with a not unkind expression. It almost looked like pity. "Love is the killer of ambition." Carisi's brow wrinkled. 

Barba sighed again. "The work mattering, that should affect your career choice. Working with "people that matter"... they shouldn't. Once they do, you've gotten too close." Carisi's mind flashed to Rollins, his face reddened. Barba saw.

"Go home Carisi."

Carisi made his way toward the door, feeling a little exposed. He wasn't wrong, and Carisi knew he was offering the advice from a place of concern. They hadn't always gelled, but their dynamic was one that had pushed Carisi to grow, forcing him to acknowledge a grey area of morality and justice. He was a better lawyer and a better person because Rafael Barba had never let him off the hook. That grey area of justice had bolstered Carisi when he sat on the stand a few months ago and told a jury that a woman who killed her husband wasn't necessarily a coldhearted killer. When Stone had looked at him with all the emotional range of a sack of potatoes. Carisi shook his head, thought about practicing law for the first time in years. He snorted, his hand on the door knob. Glanced back at Barba. 

"I'll go home, read the bible and pull passages that Stafford references in the emails." 

"Find me something good." He didn't even look up.

"Welcome back Rafael." 

Barba's head didn't move but his eyes flicked up to Carisi's, back down to the legal pad. Smirked. 

"Just find me something good."


	5. Chapter 5

"Barba wants to go over your testimony tonight." 

Carisi put the phone on its cradle, spun in his chair, catching Olivia's eye as walked past him.

She turned. "Oh?" She fixed him with a wide eyed stare. "So I suppose I'll just drop everything?" He shifted in his chair uncomfortably, but before he could say anything she took pity on him. "Its fine." She held up a hand. "I just need to finish a few things and we can head out."

She spent the next hour finishing some work, though admittedly she took a little longer than necessary. The coward had called her detective instead of her. He had been avoiding her, emailing and communicating with Carisi regarding the case. She couldn't even fault him, she hadn't been involved in the case until recently when the media attention had sent one of Chelsea Manor's church members into the squad room. She had disclosed to Olivia. Stafford had been in the building with his defense attorney, because they were booking him on the additional charges, and the young woman, Emily Pierce, had exhibited classic PTSD symptoms when they came face to face. So now Olivia was testifying. She was annoyed that she was mad about that, forcing herself to acknowledge that she was avoiding him as much as he was avoiding her. It had taken both her and Rita Calhoun to separate them, dragging the traumatized girl from the bullpen and into an interview room.

"If your squad keeps up their witch hunt against my client, I'll file charges." She and Rita were standing in her office, after the outburst.

Olivia held up her hands. "That's a traumatized girl. Let's not traumatize her further." 

Rita cocked and eyebrow. "Traumatized girl, or woman with a vendetta against my client because they had consensual sex and he moved on?" Olivia's lip curled.

Rita held up a hand. "I'm prepared to talk plea if you and Barba want to get on the same page."

"That's between the two of you."

Rita looked at her with an expression Olivia couldn't quite identify. Olivia thought of the Chief, standing in that exact spot with a similar look on his face. 

"We already spoke. He's refusing to drop the felony charges." She shrugged. "Maybe he pulled the plug on his own brain when he pulled the plug on that baby." She stared Olivia down. Turned to leave.

Olivia's stomach rolled. She choked out, "That was mercy." 

Rita rolled her eyes, turned back to Olivia. "Don't you think I know that? Whether or not a toaster is plugged in or not, it won't toast the bread unless the handle is pushed down. If the handle won't go down it doesn't really matter whether or not its plugged in, the bread's still cold." 

Olivia's stomach rolled at the callousness of her analogy. She put a hand to her stomach. 

Rita was already walking out the door. "Call me if you want to talk deal.

Olivia sat at her desk, her stomach aching at the memory. She swallowed the bile.

"-Lieu?" Carisi was leaning into the door, looking hesitant. Great, she was scaring her detectives. 

She took a breath. "Yeah, coming."

_______________________________________________________

She was sitting in the witness box, and Barba and Carisi were standing at the table, arguing about a point of Stafford's testimony from earlier that day. She sighed, waiting it out. 

"You werent there, he's very convincing. He was a defense attorney's dream." Barba looked at the agitated detective, shrugged. "He was reasonable, intelligent, even sympathetic."

Barba was standing with his back to her, flipping through his notes. Carisi was perched on the table, facing her but his full attention was on the counselor. She was being patient because she knew Carisi was gaining valuable experience, but her irritation was growing. Still, the detective was agitated and engaged in a way that she hadn't seen in a while. He had to stay out of the courtroom until now because he was testifying, but as soon as he finished his testimony this morning he spent the afternoon reading the log for the case. The point of this meeting had derailed about an hour ago, because they were arguing about Stafford's testimony.

"Yeah I get that, but you missed something. He gave you a window." Carisi was confident, not flustered the way she remembered him getting when he and Barba squared off over a legal matter.

Barba stilled, put put his hands on the documents he had been rifling. He turned toward Carisi but didn't say anything, giving no biting remark. Just waited to see what he would say.

Carisi straightened. "He rambled on and on about the "umbrella of authority right? In a Christian marriage?" Barba's eyes rolled a little at the memory, nodded. 

Carisi already looked triumphant, going through the small mess of papers that he brought until he found what he was looking for. Held up a the page. "This is the worksheet that Stafford himself hands out to his congregation. You see what I see?"

Barba snatched the paper, looked at the detective. Smiled. The paper was a graph that demonstrated the authority in a marriage. The largest umbrella represented Jesus, with an umbrella under that representing the husband, with the wife under both. The heading of the worksheet was titled, in bold print, "The Hierarchy of Protection in a Marriage."

Carisi leaned back a little. "Hard to win an argument of submission when the husband fails to protect his wife."

Barba looked at him, impressed. "Or causes her pain." He looked down at the paper, glanced back at Carisi. "Good work." 

She sighed. She was going to have look for a new detective.

Because Carisi's testimony was over, Barba allowed him to coach Olivia, asking her questions and only speaking up when Carisi made a misstep, telling him to leave certain points of her testimony out or when she should add something. She already knew most of what he told the detective, but kept her mouth shut so Carisi could learn, allowing him to direct her. She had to admit that he had a natural ability, that she could see him relating to his witnesses and a jury on a disarming and human level.

"After Ms. Pierce disclosed to me that the defendant had participated by forcibly holding her down so that her husband could rape her, we encountered the defendant." 

Olivia watched Barba instead of Carisi, who was pacing in front of her. He was seated behind the prosecution table, his legs resting on its surface. He looked completely at ease.

Carisi bounced a little on the balls of his feet. Glanced at Barba. "And how did Ms. Pierce react to the defendant's presence?" Barba didn't look up, but nodded.

"She immediately-" she was cut off by Carisi's phone ringing. He pulled it out of his pocket, put it to his ear while he wandered away. 

Both Olivia and Barba watched him on the phone, but Barba's head was still tilted downward, toward his notes. Olivia met his eyes with a cool stare. He looked back down. 

Carisi came back, shoving his phone in his pocket. "That was Rollins." He grabbed his coat. "DV Vic, raped by her husband and maybe his brother. Sorry guys." 

Barba's feet hit the floor, the look of panic on his face almost comical if she didn't know that it was there because of her. "She can't handle it? I'm not always going to have this kind of time in my schedule." 

Carisi looked at him like he was crazy. "Its a call, we don't do those alone." He laughed as he headed toward the door. "Besides, we both know the Lieutenant doesn't need my coaching." He left.

They were alone.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up, they discuss violence. Please don't read if it will upset you.

He had a small stack of papers in his hands, and shuffled them together, looking like the picture of calm.

Olivia was still in the witness box, her hands comfortably sitting it her lap. She watched him. She could wait him out.

He gave in, glanced up from the papers, straightened fully to look her in her eye. He didn't back down from anything.

For her part, she looked calm, because well, she was. "Where did we leave off?" She tilted her head, all innocence.

Anyone else would have regarded his expression as downright placid, but she knew him well enough to see the rigidity; he was containing something, working to retreat from her. She stayed put. Stared back at him.

He sniffed a little, looked down, away from her. "You have twenty years of experience testifying, you don't need the guidance and we both know it. Carisi's gone, go home." He glanced back up at her, saw that she hadn't moved, hadn't broken eye contact. Looked back down at his notes. 

"Want to avoid me that bad, huh?" She said it calmly, she still hadn't moved. "You seemed happy enough to see me when I was still pretending that nothing changed." 

He stayed where he was, but he started to bounce one of his legs in a nervous gesture. He huffed out a breathe, sighed. Shaking his head, he turned toward the prosecution table and started to gather his things. "I'm not avoiding you. I'm trying to do my job." He lost his breath just a little bit toward the end. But she heard.

She stayed in the witness box, didn't move a muscle. "You can turn your back on me if that makes you more comfortable. I spent six years sitting behind you in court. I can read the back of your head perfectly fine." 

It worked. He spun around, the anger on his face plain. Saw her utterly calm expression and fixed his own. She was a trained detective. He knew it was unwise to underestimate your opponent.

He eased back, rested on the edge of the table. "What?" He shrugged, now looking calm, amused. "What do you want from me?" 

She stayed calm. "I just want you to talk to me. We used to do that pretty well." She hadn't broken her gaze, even for a second.

For just a second, she saw the ghosted pain in his eyes, looking at her desperately. It went away. He was stone still, gripping the edge of the table. He looked down, back up, and he had a casual, puzzled look on his face. She'd seen it before in court. 

He shrugged. "What do you want to talk about?" 

She almost smiled. He was as good at interrogation as she was.

"Are you seeing someone?" 

He looked confused, uncomfortable. She almost laughed. 

"Ah..."

"A therapist." She stayed where she was, still not moving.

His eyes slid back to that ghosted pain. She wondered if he was sleeping. He sniffed. Looked her in her eye. "No. And we're not doing this."

She nodded, her whole body moving a little with the weight of it. She didn't move. 

He started to gather his things, grabbed the suit jacket he had tossed off the back of chair. Almost thought he had made it.

"If you don't talk about it, it will eat you alive. It already is." She said it quietly, her words punctuating into the empty courtroom.

He went still. Carefully placed his papers back on the table. He didn't turn. "I can't do this. I mean it."

She ignored what the "this" of his statement implied, pushed forward. "I've dealt with this a thousand times. Walked through it. You cannot," she waited, he didn't turn, "keep barreling forward. Denial isn't going to help you heal."

He whirled around at that, and she saw all of it, the rage and pain. He couldn't contain this. "Stop talking to me like I'm one of your victims!" He was visibly shaking, turning around to leave.

"William Lewis raped me." 

She said it so quietly she almost didn't hear herself.

He was completely still. She stayed where she was, hands in her lap.

He turned. He looked like someone had punched him. "The rape kit-"

She held his gaze, didn't move. "Not the first time. The second time."

His briefcase dropped out of his hand, and he moved, instinctively making his way back over to her. He settled back on the edge of the prosecution table. His face looked visibly crumpled, his eyes watered. He choked a little, on words or bile. She watched him close his eyes, take a breath and open them to look back at her. He waited. 

She gave him a small smile. She was still eerily calm. She almost looked serene. 

"You know, I didn't really plan on doing this." She paused, looked at him. It was his turn to nodd with his whole body, the weight of it showing on his face. But he was calm. She looked at his face, felt stronger. 

"Brian and I had this discussion once." She paused, laughed a little. "Fight," she amended, "we fought about this. Twice actually." He tilted his head, his legs crossed at the ankle, arms over his chest. He nodded. Waited.

She huffed out a breath, looked at her hands, back up at him. She continued.

"He was upset because I didn't want to tell him about it all. I didn't trust him." She whispered the last part. Barba resisted the urge to roll his eyes, kept watching her intently. 

"Recently, he said that I would never 'bare my soul to him." Barba didn't quite resist the urge to roll his eyes this time. She laughed, her eyes watering a little. Saw the sympathy and pain on his face. Didn't see pity. She felt strong. "I've thought about that. A lot." He nodded to show he was listening, but let her talk. Didn't approach her or move, much the same way she had just done for him. He didn't overwhelm her.

"You were there for me throughout that trial. You were a rock. You stayed calm, you were patient, but you never, not once, pitied me." She sucked back the emotion, refused to let the tears fall. She looked at him fiercely. He nodded. Still didn't move.

"But Brian got me thinking. Why I couldn't say the words to him. Why I didn't want to talk to him." She shuddered a little. "I didn't feel safe. He didn't make me feel safe. I knew if I said it, if I told him, he would think I was weak." She let herself cry a little. He was digging his hand into his stomach, looking physically ill, his eyes filled with moisture, but he didn't move. He stayed where he was. Waiting.

"You're not weak." He barely croaked it out, and she was a little surprised to see him in worse shape than she was. The words pushed a few tears out his eyes, but she watched him fight hard to reign himself in.

She smiled. "I know. But you know it too." She tilted her head at his confused face.

She sat tall, feeling that strange sense of calm come back to her. "Throughout the whole trial, and all of it afterward, you never made me feel weak. Like a victim. You were the only person that knew all the details, you had to, and you still looked me in my eye. I never felt weak around you. You were careful, and fierce and loyal. But you never pitied me, and it was exactly what I needed. I never thanked you for that." 

His hands were holding a single sheet of paper, absently sliding it between his index finger and his thumb. He looked at the floor. He looked completely out of his depth. She smiled. 

She didn't wait for him to reply, she knew he couldn't. He never had the capacity to accept compliments or gratitude in stride.

"You can trust me." She sat there, forcing herself to stay put. He looked back at her, his eyes wet, but no different than they were before she told him about Lewis. It made her feel strong. She snorted a little, reminded herself to tell Dr. Lindstrom that he was right, she did feel lighter.

"Its not the same thing." He was crying, and mad at himself, working to reign them in. "A psychopath raped you," he croaked it, flinched, she didn't, "I... I...-" she nodded, encouraging without words, "I killed a baby." He barely whispered it, but the tension was all over him, his jaw tight, fist clenched, his feet firmly on the floor like he was waiting for God to hit him. 

She nodded again, acknowledged him. Stared into his eyes with a clear gaze, willing him to understand that she didn't find anything there that she hadn't already known. 

"You're right. It's not the same thing. Someone did something horrible to me, and I survived. It made me stronger." She resisted the urge to move to him, stayed put. Remembered a time when his steady gaze had kept her calm. She waited until he looked up, his face tired and wet. Locked eyes with him. "Someone hurt you." She waited. 

He didn't move. She wasn't sure if he was breathing. She took a breathe, fought to find the words that would reach him. "It made you a kind and empathetic person. Did you pull that plug for any other reason," she was fierce now, willing him to hear her, "than empathy, and mercy for that baby, for his parents?" He didn't say anything but he was desperately looking at her like he wanted to believe her.

She waited. Took a chance. "Was it your father?" 

He didn't move, but he seemed calmer. He settled back on the table, aligned his features. "Yes." He was staring at her now. He looked exhausted.

She nodded. "People don't usually get in this line of work without a reason. My mother was raped. She had me. It was too hard for her. She drank." She tilted her head.

He scuffed his foot off the floor. They were both steadier, each offering a piece of information for the other, letting the weight of the secret off their shoulders. "He hit me with a belt." He paused. Whispered, "He always wanted more out of me. I provoked him. Made a game out of it." He raised an eyebrow, shrugged. 

She thought about the noises a small boy would make, the whistle of a belt, drunken yelling. Thought about Barba, standing in a courtroom with a belt wrapped around his neck to win a case. Shook her head at his stubbornness. They weren't so different. 

"What you did had nothing to do with your father." She waited. He looked back up. She was barely speaking above a whisper. "Any of the anger you feel toward your father, any reason it feels unresolved, didn't lead you to helping a desperate mother. You have to know that." 

He nodded, finally looked back at her. Tilted his head. They were both calm, each with tears drying on their faces.

"Why did you tell me?" He looked a little lost.

She smiled at him, leaning against the table and looking at her the same way he did an hour ago, six years ago. 

"Because you make me feel safe."


	7. Chapter 7

Closing arguments for the case were scheduled early, as they often were, to give the jury time to deliberate. It was a throwaway attempt at getting a verdict before closing hours. It rarely worked. 

The courtroom was packed, Judge Barth was seated. Rafael stood, straightened his tie. Took a breathe.

Stafford looked like someone had hit him with a bus. Barba had seen the look before. It was the way that powerful men looked when their manipulation stopped working, when the illusion that they had constructed to justify their evil had shattered. The man sat in his chair looking like an exposed wire. Despite Rita's attempts to comb him and make him look presentable, the man looked unhinged. There wasn't a member of the jury that wouldn't see that. 

He had looked like that since the day Rafael had done his cross, using the worksheet that Carisi had found to goad him, slowly breaking down his reasonable argument until he had gotten so flustered that Barba got him to blurt out that a woman's purpose was to please a man, and if her pain pleased him then that was her purpose. Stafford had practically screamed it, called Barba a baby killer, spitting and swearing over Rita's objections and Barth's calls for order. His satisfaction had overridden the nausea, so he didn't even flinch, kept his composure, didn't even let the exhaustion from the night before show.

______________________________________________________

He and Olivia had stayed in the courtroom for a long time, leaving after the sun went down. They didn't say anything else about the past, letting the heaviness slide off them as they walked toward her apartment. They didn't touch, didn't even bump shoulders as he walked next to her. He wasn't walking her home, they both knew she didn't need that. He just walked with her.

When they reached her apartment, the conversation about the case having halted about a block back, she stopped, turned, silently huffed a chuckle. He didn't know why, but he laughed too, his hands in his pockets, looking up at the sky. They didn't touch, but something had shifted between them. 

She leaned against her building. She was smiling. He tilted his head, smiled at her and shrugged as if to acknowledge the absurdity of the last few hours. 

She chuckled, sniffled a little to ward of the unshed tears. "We shouldn't kiss anymore if it leads to this." She sniffed again. "Too exhausting." She pushed off the building, headed for the door of her building. "Good night, Rafael." He turned to go. Turned back a little.

"We didn't kiss." He was tilted away, looking back at her.

She turned, her face a little twisted in confusion. "Um, I wasn't making out with Carmen...?" 

He laughed. "That wasn't a kiss." Tillted his head. "You assaulted me." Smiled at the crack of laughter that escaped her. "I reacted. I have friends that can investigate you for that kind of behavior." 

She pushed her door open, turned back toward him and smiled. "Give 'em a call. They'll tell you it was bound to happen at some point." 

He let her enter her building, stayed on the sidewalk. She still had her hand on the door.

"Olivia?" 

She turned back a little, met his gaze.

"When I kiss you? You'll know it." 

He walked away.

____________________________________________

He stood, buttoned his jacket. Calmly approached the jury. Carisi was leaning so far out of his chair he was practically off it. He didn't let himself look to the man's right, knew she was sitting there. He focused.

"Esphesians 5:22 states that all wives should submit to their husbands." He paused. Shrugged. "Seems like a benign sentiment. Submission." He waited, let the weight of the word settle. "I'm not here to take on scripture. I just want to address what we should do when people, like the defendant, twist the words written in the bible to suit their own dormant theology."

He paused, looked back at Stafford. His eyes flicked toward the gallery, found Olivia's. She held his gaze until he broke it.

"Mr. Manor raped his wife, we know that. He brutalized her for his own sick pleasure." He paused. He didn't turn, but his hand went back, pointing at Stafford. "The defendant told him he could, that he should. Used his position of authority as a spiritual leader to manipulate and coerce the victim, so that she felt she didn't have a choice." He paused. "He took her choice away. Defense tried to tell you that what happened in the Manor's marriage has nothing to do with the defendant." He paused. "It does." He stopped, stared at the jury. "At what point should we intervene? Should we condone a man physically owning his wife? The defendant thinks that you can." He looked at each of the female jurors individually, saw the revulsion. Felt the win. He had this. "He isn't a Christian. He's just a man, using the bible to suit his own twisted theocracy. Don't let him." 

He turned, met eyes with Rita Calhoun's composed face. Saw it in her eyes. She knew as well as he did that he had won. Made his way back to his seat. 

Judge Barth went through the routine, telling the jury to only convict the defendant if the evidence stated that he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but Barba was practically swelling with the victory as he stood, met eyes with Rita, and walked out of the courtroom. Olivia had left with a phone call so he made due with Carisi, the two of them leaving the courtroom to head back to his office.

They burst into the reception area, and Carmen stood. She saw their flushed faces, Barba's smirk. 

"My only concern is the older lady, she looked stodgy." Carisi stepped off the elevator, loud, his excitement ramping up his volume.

Barba was calm, the joy contained in his eyes. "Mm mm. She was gone when he started shouting about women providing pleasure. I'm only concerned about the guy in the corner. His facial expressions were harder to read."

Carmen stood. "You're looking triumphant." She approached him with a small stack of files. 

He shrugged, twisted his mouth a little, took the files. Smiled at her. "I will buy you coffee for a week if we don't have a guilty verdict within five hours." 

She rolled her eyes, pushed something under his nose that he signed. He was always more playful when he won. "I'm not taking that bet. I'm smarter than that."

"Buchanan call back?" 

"No." She interrupted his request, "I'll try him again. You have a visitor." 

She didn't miss the anticipation that dimmed in his eye when he looked into his office, saw Dodds. She'd worked for him for a long time.

"Ugh. I'll let you take that one." Carisi shifted toward the elevator as Dodds approached, opening Barba's office door like he was welcoming someone into his home. 

"Counselor! Detective, how are you? 

"Chief. Just leaving. We were just celebrating a little." Carisi dared to hold eye contact for a moment. "But I gotta get back." He shot two fingers towards Dodds in a mini salute, touched Carmen's arm on his way past and left.

Barba was opening a file, scanning through it while Carmen took the document he had signed back. "Chief Dodds, what can I do for you?" He didn't look up.

The chief was all smiles though. "Oh, I just wanted to come by and congratulate you, take my egg on the head. That was a hell of a case, counselor."

Barba glanced up, amused. So the governor had switched stances. "Thank you but that isn't necessary."

"Ah." The chief waved a hand, pushing past the apology like they were old friends. He was a political minded man, and his affiliations shifted to suit his aspirations. Barba saw that, because he recognized it.

Dodds turned toward his office, wandering in like he belonged there. Barba met Carmen's eye over the file. She bit back a smile. "I'll come get you in five minutes."

He turned on his heel and followed.

The chief was the picture of ease, ignoring the fact that the last time they were in this office he had been playing for the opposition .

"Man you guys get some nice offices. I could use a drink. How about-"

He was interrupted by the shots cracking through the air.


	8. Chapter 8

Stafford slammed into the room, gripping Rita Calhoun's jacket. Barba felt the shock like a slice of pain down his chest, heard a ringing in his ears, faintly heard the distant screams from the people on the lower floor. Prayed that Carisi had taken the elevator.

Dodds didn't miss a beat, his hand going to his holster before Stafford was even fully in the room.

"Do not!" Stafford was disheveled, his eyes were bloodshot, and he no longer looked angry, but wild, almost like an addict. His gun was planted against Rita's temple, pushed until she choked out a low gasp, her eyes bugging out.

Dodds waited a beat, shifted his gun toward the floor, dropped it when it was two feet above the ground. The noise rang out through the room.

"Kick it to me. Now." Stafford was shaking, his gaze erratically roaming the room like he was looking for an enemy. He was still holding the gun to Rita's head, but stopped pushing it into her skin. Her eyes glazed over. 

"Ok. Ok. Alright. We just need to calm down." Dodds used his foot to ease the gun toward Stafford, his hands in the air, eyes wide, hands steady. Carmen was making a noise, a low incessant keening sound into her hands. She slid down the wall until she was in a half crouched position. Her face was dry.

"Mister Stafford? I'm Chief Dodds. You can call me Bill." One of Dodds's hands touched his own chest. Right against his heart. "What can I do for you?" He eased his body until he was positioned in front of Carmen. Rafael's eyes were locked on Rita's. They stared at eachother. 

"I- I'm negotiating- We need to make a deal." His voice was choppy, eyes roaving the room, landing on Rafael. "A... a plea deal." He jerked Rita's shoulder a little. Rafael's stomach lurched, his panic rising, he barreled forward until he was right at the chief's back. The words tumbled. "There are no deals. You're mad, fine. Stop shaking her and take me on." Barba's eyes were wild, the air coming out of him in quick bursts. He couldn't seem to fill them. He was halfway toward Stafford, both of them shouting, when Chief Dodds grabbed him, pushed him back. Carmen had started to cry.

"Counselor. Counselor. Stop." His voice was low, he shook him, grabbed his face until their eyes met. "Stop. You're in shock." Barba pushed a little, daring the swearing Stafford with his eyes, all the years of careful compartmentalizing out the window with his panic. 

Dodd's grabbed his shoulders, all but slammed him into the windowed wall between the reception area and his office. "Rafael." His voice was low, but urgent. "You need to calm down." The older man grabbed his face, forced him to look at him again. "Stop talking for once. You're gonna get us all killed." The older man's face was barely an inch from his own, and Barba saw his fear. Sucked in air through his nose. Nodded. 

Dodds let go of his face, gave his shoulders a small push, made sure he was going to stay put, and turned back toward Stafford. 

"Ok, Mr. Stafford, we're going to get you what you need. We just need to make sure everyone is safe." Dodds eased back into the middle of the room, making his way to Carmen. "First let's get everyone settled, and then we're going to work out a plan." Dodds stopped, his hands still poised midair. 

Stafford's hand moved from Rita's jacket, into her hair. He jerked her head back a little. Rafael gripped the wall. "I want a deal." The disgraced priest was fully crying, the anger fading as he crumpled. "I didn't hurt those women. I don't sin. I'm not a sinner." He was weeping. "I don't- I dont kill- babies, or have sex with married men-" he shook Rita. She looked like a rag doll.

"No, no. I know." Dodds's hand came up, his tone even, paternal. "Let's just," he eased over, raised Carmen from the wall, "get everyone situated, and then we'll work through this misunderstanding." He nodded. Waited until Stafford nodded back. "Alright I'm just going to move this young lady, what's your name honey?" 

Carmen scrubbed her hands over her face, shuddered, leaning into Dodds's arms. "Its, its Carmen, my name is Carmen." Her voice was thick with tears, her panic too great to even register that Dodds already knew her name. He was giving personal information to Stafford, humanizing them to him. 

"Alright, well I'm gonna take Carmen, and we're gonna settle her in Rafael's office. There you go sweetheart, why dont we take that picture of your beautiful daughter with you?" Dodds swiped the frame from her desk, easing the now fully sobbing Carmen to Rafael. 

Barba pushed from the wall, forcing air in and out of his lungs. He felt unhinged, he hated feeling out of control. His arm reached out, he had Carmen in his grip. 

Stafford still held Rita's arm, wildly watching. He was losing control, he could feel it. The weight of the defense attorney in his arm was making it go numb, Rita getting heavier as her legs buckled underneath her. He watched as the prosecutor blindly reached for the door behind him, eased it open. He could hear the sirens in the distance, getting louder. They were getting close. He felt boxed in.

"No!" He waved his gun around, shook Rita Calhoun to get her to stand straight. Fired a shot into the air.

Everyone went stone still.

Carmen's cries picked up, she was wailing despite Rafael's attempts to muffle her into his shoulder.

"We all stay together- we, we dont go to the window- I want us together!" Stafford was throwing demands out, asserting himself.

Dodds was still in the middle of the room, one hand extended toward Stafford and Rita, the other toward Rafael and Carmen, looking like a referee trying to separate two different hockey teams. He slowly nodded.

"Ok. Where should we go Mr. Stafford? Can I call you by your first name?"

Stafford waited, tears pouring down his face. He swiped at his face with the back his arm, the gun in his hand pushing into Rita's face. "Joe." 

"Joe. Alright, Joe. Let's figure this out. Why don't we settle in the office, calm this young lady down?" Carmen was physically being held up by Rafael.

Stafford nodded, and they all eased into the office. 

"I want them all behind the desk." He seemed calmer now, less unhinged. He shoved Rita.

She stumbled, straightened her jacket and made her way over to Rafael and Carmen. Rafael wrapped his hand around Rita's wrist, squeezing her clenched fist. He slid down the wall with Carmen still clutched to him, pulling Rita down as well. Carmen was in deep shock, her teeth chattering. He pulled his overcoat off the back of his chair, wrapped it around her. Scrubbed her arms in an attempt to warm her. Rita and Barba locked eyes.

"Ok." The chief sounded as jovial as he did when he was walking around Barba's office looking for a drink. "We need to get you a deal. We can do that." He noted that Stafford was still waving the gun aimlessly. That wasn't a good sign. He stepped in front of the desk. 

"I need a plea deal. I'm not guilty- I'm innocent, but I need,- he ruined my reputation." Stafford waved the gun at Rafael, choking the words out, gulping in air between sobs like a child.

"And you're gonna get a deal." Dodds reached for his phone.

"I just need to call a friend to make that happen Joe." 

Everyone waited, the room going so quiet that they could hear Stafford's finger playing with the trigger.

Stafford nodded.

Dodds made the call.


	9. Chapter 9

The street was a mess of people, crowds of first responders, cops, and the evacuees flooding the street. The courthouse had been evacuated as a precaution, so judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys milled among the groups of people. 

Olivia was in the middle of it all shouting, screaming orders that weren't hers to give, moving people with the sheer force of her hysteria.

"We need this area cleared, we need to set up triage and if I see a reporter they will answer to me!" Cops and EMTs moved, setting up the perimeter as quickly as possible. It wasn't fast enough.

She was losing it. She felt unhinged, ready to pull her hair from her head. She might have been doing exactly that, she couldn't even feel anything over the ringing in her ears. They said shots had been fired in the building. People were pouring out, screaming. She saw blood on someone. He never emerged from the building. One of the prosecutors, a younger man who worked with homicide stumbled past her. She had grabbed him, shook him, shouted at the poor young man with blood on his shoulder, demanding to know who was still in the building. He looked stunned.

And then he said he thought it was that priest, the People V. Stafford case.

She almost vomited.

She spotted Ed Tucker through the crowd, barreled toward him. He was calmly setting up on the hood of a car, with an ambulance in front him. He worked swiftly, hooking a phone into a grey laptop.

"If your crew doesn't move faster," she was sucking in air, hurling her fury at him, "I will do your job for you!" 

He looked up, took her condition in. Kept working while he spoke to her. 

"Benson I am setting up as fast as I can and I will move faster if you're not insulting me. Step back. Let us do our jobs." He looked at her, took in her condition. She looked hysterical. She was a cop, he had never seen her look like that. He looked through the crowd, saw that her entire team was among the many groups of people in the street.

He switched his approach. "Alright Olivia, I'm setting up and as soon as I get the call we're gonna get this rolling. But we've got everyone out of the building except for the hostages." She was sucking air in, her eyes were blind, she didn't even register that he was using the same tone on her that he used for victims. To keep them calm. He scanned the crowd, moved closer to her, put his hand on her arm. "Olivia we've got this, your detective is fine, we'll get everyone out." He watched her panicked eyes land on Carisi, who was standing there staring at the building with his hands on his head looking stunned while he yelled at some beat cops to let him back into the building. Amanda held him in place. He watched her register her detective's safety. The panic didn't leave her eyes. Her chest was actually heaving and he thought she might be hyperventilating.

"Who do we know is still in the building?" He spoke to his lieutenant, a tall older man calmly holding a clipboard. Olivia looked like she was going to beat him with it.

Carisi came over, looking stunned. "Ah, ah. He- its Stafford. I passed him. He didnt have his gun out. He was with Rita Calhoun." He looked at Olivia, his face crumpled. "I didn't see. I should have seen." Olivia's hands were in her hair.

Ed Tucker calmly wrote Rita Calhoun's name on the clipboard. "Anyone else?" He looked at Carisi.

"Yeah, yeah if they were going for Barba's office. He was in there-" 

"Its Rafael, he's going for Rafael." Olivia whispered it, her hands still in her hair, her voice cracking. Tucker looked at her, understood.

"Carmen's in there. Barba's assistant. So's Chief Dodds. He wouldn't have had time to leave, my feet just hit the pavement when I heard the screaming- I should have-"

Tucker cut him off. "You got people out of the building. You would have just escalated the situation if you had gone in there." Olivia made a noise behind him, like a low hum. 

The sound of a gun going off broke through the noise of the crowds of people.

"We need to go in there! He could- they could be dying!" She was yelling at Tucker, at his Lieutenant. Fin's hand came under her elbow, anchored her so she stayed standing. She was desperate, all of her training and experience lost, she forced herself to stare Tucker down, put her hand on her holster. 

He put a steadying hand on her arm. "Dodds is in there, he knows what he's doing. We need to make contact, my guys don't have a visual, we don't even know where they are."

Tucker's phone rang.


	10. Chapter 10

Tucker calmly lifted the phone to his ear.

"Hello. This is Ed Tucker." He sounded like he was ordering a pizza.

Dodds scanned the room, the phone to his ear. Carmen was holding the photo of her daughter to her chest like a religious relic. Rafael was murmuring in her ear, his lips pressed into her temple, all lines of professional decorum blurred in this moment, only their terror and deep affection for eachother remaining. Rita was seated next to Barba, her fist still in his hand, the force of his grip vibrating. She watched Stafford, her eyes blank.

Dodds breathed deep, focused. Stafford jerked the gun, a small clicking noise escaping from it. Dodds moved the phone from his ear, hit the speaker button. Stafford nodded, aimlessly pointed his gun at Rafael's eye. Barba covered Carmen's head with his hand.

"This is Ed Tucker." He repeated it, still dead-calm. "Who am I speaking to?" 

"Ed, Ed its Bill. I'm here with Joe and we need your help to make a plea deal." Dodds nodded at Stafford intently as he spoke reassuringly, distracting the man's attention away from the trio behind him.

"Alright then." Tucker nodded, his eyes revealing nothing. Olivia moved, put her hand on his arm, dug her nails in. He didn't flinch, didn't even look at her, just lowered the phone and hit the speaker button. She sucked in a breath. Fin still held her elbow.

"Ok Bill, is Joe with you?" 

Dodds looked up, into the gun. "Yes. We're all together."

Tucker nodded, met eyes with his lieutenant. "Ok Mr. Stafford, well my name is Ed and I'm gonna get you what you need. Can I call you Joe?"

Stafford looked at Dodds, his panic at being addressed showing in his eyes. Rafael swallowed his hysterical laughter in his throat. Dodds nodded.

"Yes." Stafford choked the word out. 

Tucker nodded, looked at his lieutenant again. "Alright Joe, well I'm here to help. Is everyone safe Bill? Is anyone hurt?"

Stafford cut him off. "I need- I need to talk to the jurors!" 

Carmen shook against Barba. "Do you remember?-" her teeth were chattering. 

"What?" Barba whispered it, his nose to her cheek.

She turned until they were nose to nose, her eyes and nose streaming. "Do you remember," she hiccuped, "when you came back, and you were being pissy with me?" She barely whispered it, her breath touching his face.

He tightened his hold on her. "I do."

"You were being such- a jerk. Said that I was going to have to put up with you again now that my "buddy" was gone. And I said," she sucked in a ragged breathe, "that it was beneath you to make me say that you were always my favorite?" 

He dropped a kiss onto her cheek, pressed his forehead into hers and nodded. "I remember."

She huffed out a silent laugh. "I take it- I take it all back. I like him more. So much more. He was boring. Didn't get me shot at." Her whispers came out in breathes, she was hiccuping.

He smiled, his hysterical chuckle silent as their eyes connected. "I will buy your coffee forever." He held her eyes, silently promising her life if he could manage it. 

"- I can't do that Joe." Tucker was calm, looking into the middle distance to block everyone else out. It didn't quite work, because he could see Olivia with both of her hands over her mouth, muffling the low noise she was making.

Olivia knew well enough that her silence was imperative, so she put both of her hands on Tucker's arm, her finger nails cutting into his skin again, desperate eyes staring at him. She wanted him to get the jurors, get anyone else he had to. Give Stafford what he wanted. Shoot him in the head. She hadn't heard Rafael's voice.

Fin gently pried her hands from Tucker's arm, was shocked when the full weight of the lieutenant pressed into his arms. He eased her down until she was seated on the bumper of a car.

Tucker turned from her. "Alright Joe, I'm going to help you out, but I need to know that everyone is safe. Can Bill tell me how everyone is doing?"

Stafford's hands were in his hair, the gun touching the crown of his head. Barba willed it to go off. Stafford nodded.

"Ok," Chief Dodds nodded. "Everyone is doing alright, we're just a little shaken. I'm here with Rafael, Rita and Carmen. There's no one else." He paused, took the chance. "But the women, the women are in a little bit of shock. They're not handling this so good."

Rita's eyes snapped, alert. She made to move, get up. Rafael pulled her down. They were both sharper than most, understood what the chief was trying to do, that he was playing into the priest's misogyny. That he was going to try and save the women. They both knew what that meant. Rafael squeezed her hand until she looked at him, the argument in her eyes. He barely shook his head, begged her without a word. Her mouth opened a little, the revulsion and shock coming.

Tucker searched his brain for the details of the case, nodding as his Lieutenant held up his phone with headlines about the trial. "Well Joe, I want to help you, but I want you to help me too, to send the women out, let us talk this through." He didn't turn, but heard the low noise coming out of Olivia. His suspicions confirmed, he gripped the phone, focused.

Dodds looked up from the phone, saw the uncertainty in Stafford's eyes. "Let's let the women out. We can settle your plea like men." He nodded encouragingly. 

"I- I need the, I need the jurors. I need-" His voice was watery, exhausted, he gestured with his gun, indicating Rita.

"No, no we don't need her for the deal." He jerked a shoulder. "We'll make it together. Tell her what she needs to know." Dodds's hair moved, bounced off his forehead with the force of his friendly nodd. 

"Joe, I'll tell you what," Tucker cut off the argument, "if you send the women out, I can't get the jury for you but I can get Judge Barth over here, and we'll see what we can do."

Hope flickered into Stafford's eyes. "And- I keep, I keep Bill and," his face twisted in anger, "and- Barb- Bar- Barba?" His hiccups were coming, the tears flowing.

Ed ignored the low weeping behind him. Olivia was desperately trying to reign herself in. Fin stepped in front of her, obscuring her from view. "For now. For now, Bill and Rafael are going to stay with you."

Dodds looked behind him briefly, nodded at Rita and Rafael. The three slowly rose from the floor, silently. Carmen was clinging to Barba's shirt, sobbing with the hope of escape, at having to leave her boss behind. Rita was silent, but her eyes were wild with protest.

Tucker waited a beat. "Is that ok, Joe?" 

Stafford experimentally pointed the gun at his hostages, Dodds tensed, poised. Stafford nodded.

"Ok." Dodds took a breath. "Joe says its ok! We're gonna send the ladies out." He turned and Barba took in the sheer tension on Dodds's face. He was sweating, his calm tone betrayed by his wide, dilated eyes. Barba sucked in a breathe, the panic kicking into his skeleton.

"Please-" Carmen was clinging to him again, her hysteria rising at the prospect of escape. He brushed his lips onto her temple, eased her into Dodds's arms. 

"This is crap." Rita breathed it, Barba was sure he was the only one who heard. 

"Don't." His eyes were wide. Hers watered. She lifted her shaking hand, laid it on his chest. They locked eyes. 

She reached over, fixed his tie, smoothed it down. The corner of her mouth turned up a little, both of their faces twisted with the unshed tears of a lifetime of battles, quips, irritation and opposition. She flicked her hair over her shoulder, turned.

Her legs were steady as she gripped Carmen and strode from the room.

"I want- I want Barth!" Stafford fired a shot in the air, Rita turned, just outside Barba's office, looked in. Dodds furiously waved her away, grabbing Barba by his shoulders and pushing him into the corner of the room. 

"Hang up!" 

Dodds hit end call.


	11. Chapter 11

They all heard the shot go off before the connection cut off. 

Carisi's hands went back to his hair, Olivia's hand was pressed into her chest, forcing her heaving breathes down. Every cop in the vicinity put their hands on their guns.

Tucker's eyes came up, Olivia saw his uncertainty.

"We have to go in-" she was begging.

"Wait. We have to wait." He was speaking in measured tones, holding her eyes. They all stared at the door, waited. Olivia imagined the bullet slicing through Rafael's head, catching the side of his neck. Hitting his heart. She stopped breathing.

The door burst open, and Rita emerged, looking wild but composed, not even a wrinkle on her skirt as she strode forward, only her slightly disheveled hair revealing the signs of a struggle. She had one arm around Carmen, the other batting away EMTs as though they were reporters and Carmen was her defendant in a case.

She was barreling forward, her gaze intently fixed on Olivia, moving Carmen through the crowd. She was on a mission.

Olivia shot into action, the motivation of a task, a job pulling her back into focus, and she lunged, both Rita and Olivia shoving people until they were within hearing distance.

Rita stopped short, the force of it pushing her hair forward. "He. Is. Alive!" She spat the words out, her tone vicious with her shock.

And in that moment, it was all Olivia wanted in the world. Rita's words slapped her, reaching past the ringing in her ears. Her wild eyes locked onto Olivia's, held hers until Rita knew that she had heard her. Olivia straightened, composed herself with her hand still pressing into her chest.

She moved to them, steadier now, and collected Carmen from Rita. The younger woman sagged into her, her slim figure crumpling, faintly wailing for her daughter. Olivia whispered comforting words, rubbed her back.

She was wearing Rafael's jacket.

It was the camel colored one, she could feel the wool under her hands. She shifted Carmen, the metal picture frame pressing into her chest. His scent clung to the garment, and all of the calm that Rita's voice had slapped into her threatened to slide away.

Carisi reached for Rita, asking her if she was injured, if she needed medical assistance. Rollins was on her other side, hand on her arm. She batted them both off, straightened her jacket. 

Her chest heaving, she marched to Tucker. 

"He has his gun, a pistol, he has Dodds's gun too. One minute he's calm, and the next he's crying." Tucker nodded. They all knew that wasn't good. That he was emotional, erratic. "He kept pointing the gun at us, and his own head. He- he thinks Barba ruined his reputation." Olivia's stomach caved in. 

"Anyone injured?" Tucker put a hand on Rita's arm. She twisted her arm away. 

"No. Dodds had everything under control. The bullet didn't hit anyone, at least I dont think." She was vibrating with the will to be calm. She glanced at the cluster of prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges that were watching her. Sucked in a breathe and willed her mind to stay clear. 

She didn't think. Olivia heard the edge of uncertainty in Rita's tone, knew how unreliable witnesses were in this state. Choked on her vomit.

Rita turned, walked on steady legs. Weary of all the eyes on her, she fixed her hair and headed for an ambulance.

Tucker moved quickly, calmly calling out orders, leading a shocked Judge Barth over to the car, giving her instructions. Everything was in place. He turned toward Olivia.

"What do you need?" He said it low, his face a few inches from hers. She had composed herself, relying on her lifetime of experience to bite back the cold bile in her throat and steady her shrunken lungs.

She was holding his jacket.

She breathed through her nose. "I need to hear his voice." She looked Tucker in his eyes, saw his understanding. He nodded. Removed his hand from her arm and turned back toward Judge Barth.

"I need you to keep him calm, placate him-"

Barth held up a hand, nodded. "I understand. We'll do what we have to do, say what we have to say. We're going to get them out." She nodded at Olivia. Olivia didn't even care that Barth saw, that it was written all over her face. She nodded back, forced air into her lungs.

Tucker dialed the phone, they all waited. No one picked up.

____________________________________________

The phone sat in the middle of the room ringing, Dodds having abandoned it in his attempt to take cover when Stafford fired a second shot.

Stafford was on one end of the room, wailing, holding his nearly empty gun and Dodds's gun in each hand, muttering about the ultimate judge. He was conflating Barth's influence, connecting his verdict with religious absolution. Dodds's knee was singing, it having connected with the floor harshly when he tackled Barba.

They were both on the floor, Dodds on his knees, half covering Barba still. Dodds drew in a ragged breath, pulled back, his body creaking. Barba looked stunned. His pupils were blown open, nearly obscuring the green of his eyes. 

"You ok?" Dodds squeezed his arms.

Barba's eyes snapped to the older man's. 

"We're going to die. He's going to kill us." 

It wasn't a question.

Dodds leaned in, grabbed the other man's face, lowered his voice. "You listen to me. You are not gonna die. I will not let that happen, Rafael, I swear it. There's one of him, and two of us." He shook Barba's jaw a little until he nodded. "You have to stay calm, and do everything I say, and I promise you, I will not let you die. Ok?" 

Barba looked at him. Pulled the air in. His mind was racing, disproving the chief's promise with the thousand scenarios that were running through his head. Stafford didn't want Barth to reverse his impending guilty verdict, he wanted Barba to take back everything he had said, everything he had gotten Stafford to say. He wanted to go back. And Barba couldn't take it back. Wouldn't, even if he could. He was probably going to die in this room that he had spent an inordinate amount of time in, with a man that he had butted heads with for half a decade. He was never going to see her again. She was never going to know just how much she meant to him. His heart twisted in his chest. But even so, he wouldn't take it back, because it was right. Stafford was a bad man. Even if it killed him, he wasn't going to back down now. Doing the right thing didn't always feel good.

He looked into Dodds's tired eyes, quieted his ever racing mind, dug deep for some faith. Nodded.

Dodds let go of him, shifted until he was fully turned, facing Stafford.

"How we doing Joe?" 

Stafford shrugged. Barba very nearly laughed again. 

Dodds stood, the weight of his exhaustion and age showing as his hand landed on his knee, supporting him. He was so tired. Barba stood as well, coming to stand beside him. Dodds shifted a little so his shoulder stood in front of Barba's.

"That's probably Judge Barth, with Ed." Dodds waited.

Stafford ran the gun up the side of his nose, subconsciously scratching.

"Can I answer it Joe?" 

"We're all gonna die." Stafford was crying, his mouth open.

"No, Joe, we're all ok. We're gonna talk with Ed, fix this." Dodds stooped, picked up the phone. "I'm gonna answer it." 

Stafford nodded.

"Ed? We're all ok. Everyone is fine. We just got excited." Dodds moved a little closer to Stafford, wondered if he could ease the guns out of his hands. Stafford shakily pointed one of them at Barba. He stopped moving.

"Alright that's ok, but we're all calm now." Tucker nodded at Barth. "I have Judge Barth here and she's agreed to hear Joe out."

Dodds smiled at Stafford, nodded. Barba bit back the inexplicable urge to laugh again.

"Ok. I want- I'm not. I'm not a bad man. I'm innocent. I don't kill- I don't kill babies-" his chest was heaving.

Barth looked at Tucker uncertainly. "No Joe. No one is all bad. I know you have a good heart." Tucker nodded. She pressed on. "Listen, Joe, we're going to get this straightened out, get to the bottom of this, but I need to hear the prosecutor, know he he's alive."

"No." It flew out of Stafford's mouth, he seemed as shocked as the other two men.

Barth looked at Tucker.

"Joe," Tucker shifted so Olivia wasn't in his sight line anymore, "I just need to know that everyone is safe. There was some commotion and I just need to know that no one got injured."

"He- he spread lies about me-" Stafford waved the gun at Rafael, blurting out accusations like a child. Against every logical thought, Barba's instincts had him staring back.

Tucker nodded at Barth. 

"Yes, and we're going to figure that out. But I need to hear his voice Joe." Barth looked at Tucker, he nodded.

Olivia waited, held her breath so she could hear him over the roaring in her ears.

Dodds looked at Stafford. 

"If he- if he talks too much I'll shoot him."

"Ok." Dodds said it like it was reasonable, shifted the phone closer to Barba, willed the man silently to keep it short, for once.

"I'm here. I'm alive. Currently."

Barth huffed out a relieved silent laugh, grateful to hear the prosecutor, know he was unharmed.

Olivia's whole body uncoiled, her legs felt like jello as she instinctively moved, to get closer to Tucker and the phone, closer to his voice.

"Ok. Good. Thank you for that Joe. I'm glad to hear everyone is still ok." Tucker gestured to his squad, and they silently made their way toward the door, getting into position, ready.

"Now Joe, Judge Barth and I talked it over, and we know you're not a bad man, and we're going to take care of you. We just need you to let Bill and Rafael go, and put the guns down. We need you to come out of the building slowly, with your hands in the air, and then we're going to work it out." Tucker spoke, clear and calm. 

Dodds could see Stafford's panic rising, moved his body in front of Barba. "Ed, Ed. We'll get there-"

"He is the bad man, not me!" Stafford was wildly gesturing again, turning around the room. Dodds almost lunged when he turned away. Missed his shot.

"I am not bad! I don't kill babies and then preach about morality!" 

Olivia's whole heart, whole body hurt for him.

"I see what you're saying Joe." Tucker was shaking his head, his frustration becoming apparent to those who could see him. "How about, you put the guns down, and then all three of you come out with your hands in the air, so everyone is safe?" 

Stafford paused, his face drying as he contemplated it.

The air knocked into Barba's chest. Hope. 

"And- and I don't go to jail-" Stafford's voice shifted, went toneless.

"I- its. It's pointless. It's. I'm going to hell-"

Stafford's eyes looked up, vacant.

Dodds moved.

"Joe, Joe don't-"

They heard three shots fire off, someone screamed, and there was a loud crashing noise. The line went dead.

Tucker's guys moved in.

____________________________________________

Barba was on the floor, all but laying on Dodds. Stafford had fired, screaming and crying while he did, aiming right for Rafael's chest.

Dodds lunged, knocked the wind out of Barba's lungs as he felt each bullet jolt into the chief's body before they crashed into the floor. Stafford was screaming like someone else had fired the gun. Dodds's blood was hot on his shirt.

He tumbled until he was on the chief, desperately trying to stem the flow of blood that was flowing from Dodds's abdomen.

"Its ok, it's ok, I'm ok." Dodds's eyes were wide, his bloody hand reaching up to touch Barba's face. He could hear the swat team pounding into the room, heard Stafford's garbled yell, the crack of the bullet leaving the barrel followed quickly by the crack of Stafford's head hitting the floor. The spray of Stafford's blood and brain matter connected with Barba's head, his clothes. 

"You did good-" the chief was holding his face. Barba was pressing into his stomach but the blood seemed to squirt through his hands.

"You're fine, you're ok," Barba lied.

The chief stared into his face, his own screwed up with the pain and sweat. He reached down, faintly grabbed Barba's bloody hands. They stilled. He reached back up and held his face with his bloody hand.

"You did good, you did so good." He smiled around the blood flowing out of his mouth. "You're ok. You're a good boy. You're a good boy." He wasn't talking to Barba anymore.

Barba felt the hands of the swat team pull him up and away, his eyes never leaving Dodds's face.


	12. Chapter 12

It felt like an eternity before he emerged, disoriented, looking like something out of a horror movie.

She found herself chanting in her head, "he's dead, he's dead" on repeat, hoping that if she thought it, she would somehow be prepared for the reality. Her detectives were running for the building, ignoring Tucker's orders to stand down, headed right for the gun shots when he appeared. 

He was covered in blood.

It was soaked into his shirt, on his tie. The dark stains were clinging to his jacket and his pants. It was smeared on his face, splatter marks on his forehead, down his neck. His hair was caked with it, and as he stumbled forward, he shook his hands out once, and she felt the sickening sound of the wet blood hitting the pavement in her gut.

He was standing. His eyes were open. He was alive.

As quickly as the air filled into her lungs, making her head go light, her stomach did a dangerous flip.

There was so much blood.

People were on him inside a second, their own panic giving way as they grabbed him, hurled questions at him. Tucker and Carisi reached him first, with Fin and Rollins right on their heels. EMTs pushed through, ready to help.

Carisi grabbed his arm, Tucker reached out to stabilize him. He shoved them both away, his eyes wide.

"Get off me. I need a shower." He was shouting. He hit Carisi, his elbow connecting with the detective's face in his panic.

"Are you shot? Barba, Barba did he hit you?" Carisi was fending him off, desperately trying to get a hold of him, check for wounds. The blood seemed to be coming from everywhere.

Olivia wrapped her arms around herself, heedless of all the eyes on her. Silently cried in relief, in fear that the nightmare wasn't over yet.

"Barba- Jesus." Carisi and Barba briefly tussled, Barba surprisingly strong in his shock. Tucker attempted to grab him, calm him down, but Barba punched him square in his jaw. Tucker staggered once, stunned.

"I need to- get out of my way." Barba was looking at the crowd, knowing in some distant, small corner of his mind that he looked terrifying, that all of his colleagues were seeing him drenched in blood, panicked. He was out of control, unhinged. They would never take him seriously again. He was exposed. His panic intensified, his mind refused to quiet.

It was Fin who grabbed him by his shoulders, dragged him to the side of the ambulance, obscuring him from the view of prying eyes, not blocking the blows of Barba's struggle, just accepting the hits. 

"Counselor. Counselor. You're safe now. You're safe now." 

Barba was shaking. Fin reached up, unceremoniously slapped him.

"You good?" 

Barba sucked air in through his nose. Nodded.

"Alright." Fin was pressing his hands into Barba's body, down his arms, over his torso, looking for the gunshot wound.

Barba jerked his head back, sniffed. 

"Its not mine. It's not mine. Its Dodds." Barba drew a ragged breath. "He's gone."

They all stopped. Tucker walked away with his hands on his head. Fin uttered, "Damnit." 

It was otherwise silent.  
____________________________________________

In the end, they had had to go back to the precinct. Barba was hostile and belligerent, wouldn't let the EMTs touch him, refused to go to the hospital. He was singularly focused on a shower, on flight, no doubt a response to the trauma. Eventually the force of four NYPD detectives and one vicious prosecutor was enough to convince the EMTs that he didn't need to be sedated. He wouldn't even let them close enough to try, shocking everyone with the impressive number of swear words he knew, flying out of his mouth like an angry thug in a rust covered playground in the middle of the Bronx. Olivia was sure she'd only ever heard him utter a swear word on less than half a dozen occasions in the entire time she'd known him.

They had walked the short distance as a unit, Fin and Carisi hovering by his side, careful not to touch him, Barba with his eyes wide, pupils blown open, and his hands raised, fingers spread. They were shaking. Rollins and Olivia walked behind them. A brave EMT, a man so young Olivia swore he had to be in high school, was determined to do his job and had grabbed his bag, trailing behind them in case he was needed.

Olivia hadn't taken her arms from around herself since she had seen him come from the building.

She was so filled with the relief of seeing him, alive and whole, that her ears hummed, her vision tunneled, and she was briefly afraid that she would faint, right there on the street in front of everyone. She was crushed by the helplessness of it all, the sheer inability to keep him safe. The clarity that relief offered made her aware of all the eyes that were on her in what felt like the most vulnerable moment of her entire life. She felt naked, exposed.

She felt weak.

She thought she would hurl herself at him, she was so desperate for his safety, but he was safe, and she felt sick, hesitant. Dodds was dead, and she knew that that hadn't sunken in yet, that she had yet to experience that tidal wave. But Rafael had survived, he had made it out, and she had done nothing to save him. She was utterly helpless the entire time. She wrapped her arms around her stomach tighter, weary of Rollins's eyes on her, her hand floating just above her back.

The precinct was nearly empty when they arrived, most of its occupants still on the street with all of the commotion. Fin and Carisi led Barba toward the locker room, still not touching him, Fin talking low as he directed him to the showers. Carisi was crying, silently blinking his eyes toward the ceiling in an effort to stem the flow. Olivia envied him.

She went to her office, quietly closed her door, resting her face on the jam. She actually tried to cry, get some of it out while she was alone. Nothing came. She dry heaved, focusing on the chip of paint on her door. Remembered Dodds and Rita both standing almost exactly where she was now, looking at her with the same, odd expressions on their faces when they talked about her and Barba. Dodds was dead. But Rafael had survived. Her guilt and relief punched into her in equal measure. 

She was still holding his jacket, clutched in her hands. 

There was a knock.

"Lieutenant?" Carisi's voice came through the door.

She dragged a breathe in. Opened the door.

"Ah, he's, I think you should come." Carisi was worn, tears fresh in his eyes, his face flushed.

She walked with him, passing Rollins, who was standing in the bullpen with quiet tears streaming down her face. 

She entered the shower area, where Fin was standing close to Barba, trying to get him to focus.

He turned. "Yeah, he's in shock."

She approached him, her hands up where he could see them. She felt exposed again, here where Fin and Carisi could watch them. She wondered if they knew.

"Ra-Barba?" Her hands came out, she laid them on his face. Immediately she shuddered, tears forcing their way out of her eyes. She tried to keep them in, hated that she couldn't. He was looking at her, but he wasn't really seeing her.

"We're going give him a minute, call me if you need help w- call me if you need me." Fin corralled Carisi from the room.

"Rafael? Can you hear me?" She let the tears fall now, endlessly grateful for the privacy. 

She ran her hands over his face, he didn't react, and the floodgates opened. She was quietly crying as she ran her hands over his face, on his shoulders, down his chest, checking for herself to see that he was unharmed.

She murmured to him while she did it, mindless words to reassure him. His eyes focused a little, the pain fresh, flashing across his eyes. He was breathing deeply, but he hadn't uttered a single word since he had successfully beat the EMTs away from him.

She moved her hands over his bruised face, into his hair, a mess from the struggle and sweat and blood. Shuddered when she felt the warmth of brain matter sitting in the short strands.

"Ok, its ok," she was speaking low, "we need to get you in the shower, ok?"

He sucked in a breathe, his eyes filling and his brow wrinkling. Looked her in her eyes. She watched him steady himself, his eyes glaze over. 

He had retreated from her.

She pushed it away, eased his suit jacket off his shoulders, ignored the sound it made when it hit the floor, heavy with blood. Pushed Dodds from her mind. Undid his tie, slowly undid the buttons of his shirt. It was the first time she had ever undressed him. She ignored her tears, pushed the shirt from his shoulders.

In the end she reasoned it was better to get him into the shower sooner rather than later, so she moved him backwards, still in his undershirt and pants, under the icey spray, hoping it would jar him back to reality. She didn't even think, just toed off her boots and removed her jacket, stepping in with him in her pants and camisole, running her hands through his hair until the water became rust colored at their feet. 

The water seemed to work a little, his chest puffed erratically as he fought for air. She didn't know if he was crying under the spray, didn't know if she was crying. She was desperately raining light kisses on his face, her hands holding him in place. She kissed his cheeks, his jaw, further back near his ear. When her mouth landed on his he reacted a little, held her to him as she felt him shaking, kissed him until she couldn't breathe anymore. Pulled air in through her nose and kept kissing him. He snapped out of his shock briefly, caught her face gently in his hands and fully kissed her back, his tongue slipping into her mouth. 

He broke it off, turned his head to the side. Controlled his tears so she wouldn't see them.

She rubbed his shoulders, tried to get him back. Pulled the stained undershirt off him, let it slap against the floor. She rinsed the blood off his body, checking again that it hadn't come from a hidden wound on his body. When she pulled at the buckle on his pants, his hand had come up, grabbed her wrist. His eyes briefly focused on her.

She had once had a filthy dream about Elliot that had taken place in this shower right before he left. She remembered waking up, feeling alone and dirty with the guilt. He had abandoned her a few weeks later. For some reason she thought of that now.

She dropped her hand. Swallowed her tears whole.

Her detectives didn't ask why she was wet, Rollins just wordlessly found her a change of clothes, her eyes swimming again after they landed on Barba's face. He was dressed in an NYPD t-shirt and grey sweat pants, his hair wet, and his eyes unfocused, and was working hard to maintain his composure.

Because she knew him, deep into the depths of herself, she knew he was fighting hard to focus, to think, his eyes flickering, flashing between profound grief and rage before they went dim.

"I'm going to take Barba home." Fin emerged with his car keys. He was steady, the only one of them that was fit to drive.

"Rafael?" Her hands came up again, rubbed down his face. "You shouldn't be alone. Can I- do you," she felt exposed again, "do you want me to go with you? Fin looked a little nonplussed, shocked she was even asking.

He look at her, and all of it passed across his face with such clarity that her own eyes stung. The pain and guilt and trauma. It flashed, and then it was gone, under the mask of disassociation that he had blanketed himself under. 

She was desperately rubbing his chest. He swallowed, all of his grief gone. Gently rubbed her hand and removed it from him. Shook his head no. He and Fin left.  
____________________________________________

They buried Chief William Dodds four days later, on a warm and sunny day. His service was nearly identical to the one that he had given for his son three years prior. Cops lined the road, the church steps, filled the pews. Dodds had worked as a cop in Manhattan for over forty years, and had made a lot of friends, some enemies and so many brothers and sisters in blue. Olivia saw his ex wife, his surviving son. She spotted a small blonde woman desperately trying to control her tears, recognized Mike's fiance, the woman who never got to marry his son. Felt the hot tears in the back of her own eyes. None of the cops cried, because he would have been furious if anyone had. She tuned out most of the service, instead remembering the man that she had often disagreed with, sometimes didn't even like, but had always always respected. Dodds was a cop, all the way to his core in a way that Olivia deeply respected. He had lived by the blue, and died by it, going out in the way that they all prepared for, but few would ever actually have to. For Dodds, it hadn't even been a debate to chose another life over his own. She wasn't shocked at all by his choice, just deeply humbled by it and profoundly grateful to him in a way that she knew she would never be able to express.

She sat among the sea of cops, all in their uniforms for the service. She found him, about three pews ahead of her and one lane over, sitting among the civilians. In the four days since the incident, she had called him incessantly, waiting for him to pick up so she could go to him. He never picked up. She sent Carisi and Fin to his apartment, paralyzed in her utter helplessness so that she couldn't bring herself to go where he didn't want her, ask of him what he didn't want to give. She was desperate for him, needed her hands on him, needed to hear his voice. But he didn't want her. Her detectives had come back claiming that he was alive, that he just needed time. And she hadn't trusted it, hadn't trusted herself, because she felt exposed and raw when she thought of him.

He was sitting in the pew, composed and together, dark suit on, face blank. She watched him throughout the service. He sat alone, away from her or Carmen or any of the many detectives and attorneys that he knew. His face seemed raw, like he had scrubbed the skin off. He was pale. 

She watched him stare blankly, his head held up, his jaw clenched, shoulders square. She thought back to the night that they had sat in the courtroom, and he had admitted his turmoil over ending an infant's suffering. He had looked ready for a punch then, and he did now. Her heart shattered watching his bruised face, clear until Dodds's very first partner on the job called out his end of watch. Then Barba's face had twisted, his head moving to the side in a subconscious gesture to control himself. Their eyes locked, and a few of his tears rolled down his face staring at her before he looked away from her.

She felt her stomach cave in, and her heart break.

They all met at the bar afterward to toast Dodds's life, their pain heightened because it only served to remind them all of Mike Dodds's funeral, when his father had sat among them. 

He was buried next to his son, with his father on the other side of his child. And Olivia knew, deep down in her bones, that it was exactly where William Dodds wanted to be.

She waited, but after Rafael left the church she didn't see him again.

____________________________________________

After the toasts and stories and hugs, she went back to her apartment, stripped out of her uniform and stood in the shower, weeping under the warm spray. She washed her makeup off, scrubbed her hair, thought about the blood all over him.

She loved him. 

She loved him in a messy, hysterical way, the way that made her feel out of control, that had her crying in front of people, people who saw her as a leader. She wasn't the lonely girl who pined for a man that she couldn't have anymore, except that she was. She was heaving sobs in her bathroom, desperately loving him and he didn't want her. She knew him so well, knew that he was the best man that she'd ever known, that she could trust Elliot with her life, but that she could trust Rafael with her heart. That she felt strong and seen and whole when he was with her. But he didn't feel the same. Had, at his most vulnerable moment, turned away from her. He didn't trust her, not with his pain. She had never seen the ragged pieces of him, he had never shown them to her. She finally understood what Brian had been trying to tell her, that she would never let him see her. 

It had taken her a long time to understand that love didn't have to always be fire, burning and painful and hard, that it could sometimes sneak up on you, building from a place of deep trust and understanding into something that was real and solid. And her love was so real, based in the deepest, most vulnerable places inside her, that it felt like a kick to her teeth that he didn't feel the same way. That he was shattered and hurt and for the second time had chosen to turn from her, collect his pain up into his heart by himself. 

She felt out of her depth, and desperate. She took a breath, pulled a brush through her hair and put on a nightshirt, her soft cotton one that she wore when she was sick. 

"Do you want me to heat you up some dinner?" Lucy was holding Noah in her arms, the boy asleep, wrapped around the small woman's frame. 

"Uh-no, no thank you." Lucy gave her a sympathetic smile, assuming Olivia's state was due to the funeral and nothing more. 

"I'm going to put him to bed."

"Actually, I have to leave."

Lucy looked at Olivia's bare legs, took in her thin cotton nightshirt, stopping just at her knees, her bare feet. "Leave? Now?"

"Yeah. If that's ok." Olivia was already headed for the door, pushing her feet into her sneakers, grabbing her coat of the hook.

"Yeah. Whatever you need. I figured you guys would be out late tonight." Olivia ignored the concern on Lucy's face.

She kissed her sleeping child, grabbed her keys and left.

She took a cab to his house, not wanting the time that walking would have allowed her, knowing that she only had so much of it before her logic and pride came back to her.

She was at his apartment in under eight minutes, the now darkened streets of the city mostly cleared of any real traffic. She walked into his building behind a group of women, all about her own age with thin, short dresses and desperate laughs, chanting about wine night.

She took the stairs. 

When he opened his door, she was momentarily shocked to see him in a thin grey t-shirt, and old jeans that he had clearly hastily pulled on. She had already undressed him, scrubbed blood from him, but this was shockingly intimate, him standing there with his hair ungelled, with bare feet and jeans with faded knees that weren't buttoned at the top. It all felt too close, and it occured to her that before the shooting, in the entire time that she had known him she had never once seen him not completely covered. Even in casual settings he wore long sleeves, often had a jacket on. Before the shooting she had never seen his bare arms before, only getting a glimpse of his forearms when he rolled up his sleeves. Apprehension skittered into her stomach, right along with her need for him.

He tilted his head a little, his confusion plain. He looked like he had been crying. No, she knew him better than that. He looked like the tears were threatening, like they were just sitting behind his eyes, pushing pressure on his brain. He looked drunk. She had come, rationalizing that she was going to check on him, that she should check on him, but now that she was here it all bubbled up, and she was terrified that he could see. He looked uncertain, but he didn't say anything, swallowing before any words escaped him.

She moved into his apartment, crowding him, desperately trying to reach him without exposing herself. She slid her hands up to his face, pressed her body into his, pushing, trying to close every centimeter between them.

She momentarily felt his hesitation, but his hands came up, under her open jacket, his breath sucked in when he felt her thin cotton nightshirt and nothing else. He ran his hands over her while she kissed him, bit his lip. He put his hand on her face, pushing her mouth open with his thumb, angling the kiss, their mouths crashing into eachother, their tongues meeting. She felt wetness on his face, was pretty sure it had come from her, but broke her mouth off his, kissed his face anyway, holding it in her hands. 

His hands roamed up her body, the cotton of her nightshirt bunching with his hands as he pushed upwards, his hands skimming the sides of her breasts. She heard his low groan, realized they hadn't spoken a word since she had gotten here.

They walked backwards, their kiss deepening until she could feel it in her stomach, hear the low moan that escaped from her throat. They eased down into a chair in his living room, it was large, cushioned, her straddling him. She had never seen his apartment before. Tears slipped out of her eyes, but she pressed closer to him, her hair falling over his shoulders, rubbing herself on him in an effort to get closer to him. He held her chin in place, deepened the kiss until it almost hurt, the stubble on his face burning her. She felt like she was on fire, felt it boiling in her, the need for him in her, with her. 

His hands scraped into her nightshirt, grabbed at her underwear, dragging them down and her stomach was on fire with desire.

Her mind flashed to the shower. She felt dirty. Alone.

She broke the kiss, pulled her face to the side and drew in a breath, letting out one sob that he couldn't see. His hand stilled on her hip immediately, he cleared his throat.

"I should go." She didn't look at him, focused on his shoulder. She was terrified that she was going to start crying 

"Oh. Ok. Sorry." His other hand was playing with the end of her hair. She forced herself not to cry. One small sob shuddered in her chest, stayed there. His voice sounded disconnected, raspy, like he hadn't used it in days.

She wiped the tears off her face, glanced at his blank, tear filled eyes. He blinked them away.

She moved off him, he cleared his throat, sniffed.

She felt exposed again. "Don't be."

She left.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading along, I sincerely appreciate it. Just a heads up, this will be the last chapter (at least for now.) I know I always hate it when I don't get a warning.

Barba sat in a metal chair, tilted a little away from the metal table, with one hand on its surface. Tucker sat across from him, staring with a pen calmly clutched in his hand. Taking a breath, he tried to suppress the irritation that Tucker's face just inspired in him, reminded himself that he should be thanking him for his life.

He felt like his head was underwater. Knew, with the burning clarity of euphoria, that this was the aftershock of trauma. He had been essentially still for the entire week, edgey with disuse. He knew from experience that when he wasn't faced with opposition that he tended to slow, become introspective. That he could not, even with alcohol or sex or drugs or sleep, ever quiet his brain from the time he was young. So he worked with what he was given, and pushed to distract himself from that tendency to think endlessly into an abyss of inaction by working toward something, edging along the outside until he could strike and expel all of his boundless thought into the performance of an action. That it would churn him out, exhausted, until he worked it up again. An endless gyre of the law, the politics and the theatre of court. He didn't just do it, he became it, so if what he was doing was sitting in his apartment with nothing but his thoughts, he would inevitably pursue that into an abysmal cloud of interconnecting revelations that left him foggy with exhaustion and bereft.

He had spent the last days, he didn't know precisely if it was five, six, maybe more, endlessly thinking. The inevitability of choice felt constant, the need to press forward, test limits, to know. But once the choice was made, that veil lifted, and you couldn't go back and enlighten yourself before that leap with the perspective you'd gained. He found it all paralyzing. In a way, he was no different from Stafford. They had made choices, however different in their intent, and when the reality of those choices became apparent, they were crushed under the magnitude of it all. And he could acknowledge in some small part of his brain, the weak part, that he wanted to go back. Go back to when he could see it all so clearly on the edge, but didn't know what it all meant. It had been quiet, insulated, but manageable, that endless gyre of edging along, with all of it right out of in front of him, where he could see what others couldn't, before he was ready, armed with knowledge, to jump into the middle of it all, expel every ounce of himself into the performance, knowing that he would get to retreat back to the edge when he was spent.

"Rafael?" He wasn't sure why, but his first name irritated him when Tucker uttered it.

"Is this really necessary?" He knew it was. Cursed the edge he heard in his own voice.

Tucker nodded, answered anyway. "We need the statements of all... the witnesses. Give the families some closure. Make sure," Tucker's jaw clenched, "make sure that we did our jobs." 

Barba looked up, saw the exhaustion in the man's face. Felt shame. "You did." 

Tucker lightly shook his head. "No. I didn't. Dodds did."

Barba's eyes burned, he looked away. Nodded.

Tucker cleared his throat. "We'll be getting the statements of everyone involved." He paused. "How is Carmen?" 

Irritation bubbled again. He was sick of the platitudes. "Oh she's great, she's thinking of getting highlights." Pinched the bridge of his nose. "Sorry."

Tucker had thirty years of experience with trauma victims, knew that every instinct to lash out, to gain control, was heightened, so he resisted the urge to tell him that Rita Calhoun had said almost the same exact thing to him when he had asked her that question.

Except she never apologized for it. 

"I just need you to go through it, step by step, take as much time as you need."

Barba sniffed, tamped down on the irritation again. He knew that Tucker was just doing his job, but he was tired of the measured tones and careful words. His mind flashed to the sidewalk, the expressions on everyone's faces. He had locked eyes with Judge Barth for a moment, right after Carisi's hand had landed on his arm like a knife. The tears that had filled her eyes as her hands covered her mouth kept tormenting him. 

He forced his brain to focus on one thing. "Stafford- Joe entered the room, he had a pistol, a six bullet pistol in his right hand, and he had his left hand around Rita Calhoun's jacket. She looked like she, um, like he had hit her." He swallowed. Tucker scribbled. 

Barba continued, "Dodds-" Tucker looked up, saw Barba's eyes closed, his fingers clenching the edge of the table. 

Tucker put the pen down. "He-" 

Barba held up a hand. Tucker stopped.

"Dodds pulled his own gun out, but uh, Stafford told him to drop it, he had, he had the gun on Rita's head, against her temple." 

Tucker scribbled, didn't look back up, but waited. "And this was all in the span of what time frame?"

"Less than a minute."

He crossed one leg over the other. "He put us in my office. He wanted a deal, but you knew that. Dodds called you, got Rita and Carmen out. Stafford never- never hit anyone or harmed anyone inside the office."

His mind flashed to Stafford now, his wild, desperate eyes. Wondered, for the thousandth time, if it all would have played out differently if Stafford's case had gone to another prosecutor. He was almost certain it would have. 

"Ok." Tucker put the pen down. "I just need to know what happened after- after they got out." Barba looked at him, felt the calm slide over him, the careful compartmentalization that had seen him through his childhood, his years at a school filled with priveliged, upper-class white kids and every single case that had taken his breath away with the violence, the sheer depravity, so that he could calmly question rapists and murderers who were relishing the details of their case on the stand. It had only ever failed him once, and that still haunted him. 

His head bobbed to the side once. "Uh, he, Joe, became erratic, or more erratic, uh, I think Dodds was going to tackle him, but didn't," he remembered the sickening adrenaline that had coursed through him when he felt Dodds tense. "Stafford became, um, he got scared when you wanted us to come out, but he was ok, calm when you told him that all of us could come out together with our hands up." 

Stafford had called him a baby killer, and he knew that he was. The line that separated morality from depravity was so very, very thin.

He looked back at Tucker, saw him tense, his fist now tight around the pen. Knew that this next part was why Tucker was here, knew that what he was about to say was important. Carefully chose his words, trying to give the other man some of the closure he couldn't get.

"He, he was calm, ready to come out, but his eyes, they went blank. I think he realized that- I think the reality caught up with him. He couldn't hide anymore. He had done things, and even if he walked, God could see." He whispered the last part. He had thought about this a lot. Tucker wasn't writing.

Barba's flicked his eyes up, met his gaze, looked back at the table. "He lifted his gun, uh, pointed it at me, and Dodds-" he was biting the inside of his mouth, tasted blood. "Dodds pushed me out the way, I could feel his, his body was in front of mine, I felt the bullets, three, go into him. His stomach. We hit the floor. Dodds bled out right as the swat team came in." 

He could feel his eyes burning, his stomach twisting, but his voice was steady and for that he was grateful. He knew in the way only consistent experience taught you that he had about twenty minutes until the migraine that was blooming behind his eyes slammed into him. He saw the blood, remembered Dodds's hands on his, stopping him from applying pressure. He had known he was going to die. Had smiled as his eyes faded to nothing.

His hands limply dangled between his knees, but he could still feel the sticky warmth of the blood. Anger flashed into his stomach for a second. He didn't ask Dodds to save him. He had been the one to file charges against Stafford, to use him to shift the law in the right direction. And now Dodds was dead. He knew he was right, that it was right, but he was smart enough to know that justice wasn't always fair, that it couldn't always be achieved without consequences. Last time an innocent child had died, and he had faced those consequences. This time Dodds had faced them. He looked at his hands.

Tucker looked defeated, like he had been hoping for something that he didn't receive. "I just- I wonder why, why he shot at you instead of turning the gun on himself when he clearly felt like he had nothing to-"

Barba cut him off. "Stop trying to get out of the amber of it, there is no why."

"What?" Tucker's face wrinkled in his confusion. "Did Olivia say that?" 

Barba rolled his eyes. "No. Vonnegut did. Or he wrote it anyway."

There was a pause. "You're a prick." There was no heat in Tucker's tone.

Barba nodded, his chin in his fisted hands, eyes on the table. "I know." 

"Are you... are you and Olivia together?" 

Barba eyes flashed up in irritation, saw nothing but regret. Took pity on him. 

"No."

Tucker's brow wrinkled again, and Barba remembered the force of his own knuckles against the man's jaw. 

"Are you sure?"

He bobbed his head to the side. "No." 

Tucker hesitated, tapping his pencil against his notebook. "I want her to be happy. Have someone to take care of her. I was prepared to, but she didn't want- she ended it." He looked away from the table, briefly at Barba. "She loves you, and you're an idiot if you don't take your shot at a woman like her." 

Barba scraped back his chair, calmly stood up and buttoned his jacket. "Nope. We are not discussing her and what's best for her. This is not a John Wayne movie. She doesn't need to be taken care of and she doesn't need us arranging her life." He shifted, gave into the urge. Leaned down a little. "And that is precisely why you aren't with her anymore." He turned, walked toward the door feeling the petty satisfaction, and not even feeling sorry for it.

Heard the muttered, "prick," behind him as he left.

____________________________________________

Olivia was packing up for the night, her eyes as tired and heavy as they felt this morning when she had crawled out of bed with five hours of sleep. It had been a week since the incident, and for all intents and purposes everything was back to normal. Except there was a general malaise in the air, punctuated with a wistful sadness whenever the interim chief would check in at the precinct, quiet and unobtrusive, an older man who implicitly trusted her judgment, never questioned her and was kind and respectful to everyone, from defense attorneys to victims all the way to perps. She found herself missing the pushback, the growth that came from standing on her own two feet, resolute in her convictions in the face of opposition. She had begun to look at every angle of each case, arguing in her own head with herself to be sure she hadn't missed anything. It was always Dodds's voice that she heard talking back.

She was the last one out for the night, finishing up the paperwork that she had spent the first half of her career avoiding, always wondering how Cragen seemed to find the time to care so much about something that she had thought didn't get the results of active police work. But she actually liked it now, saw the value in the meticulous details of writing reports, checking facts, verifying. It wasn't just a bureaucratic necessity, but the heart of a case, the difference between some small detail working to twist the law and help them put the bad guys away, to get justice.

She rubbed her chest, felt the dull ache in her heart. He hadn't been back, was still on mandatory administrative leave. She had seen Rita at the courthouse flying through the hallways while she talked to a client. When they locked eyes, Rita had kept walking. She supposed that despite her better judgment she wouldn't have made that woman stay home either. Rita also hadn't had brain matter fly into her face, hadn't seen a man shot or sat there while he bled out on her. 

She had given him space after Dodds's funeral, but refused to regret going to his apartment. In all her years, everytime she had ever had the desire to give in, she had always tamped it down. But this time had been different, because it wasn't just her who was hurting. She could take that, she could handle it. But she knew, because knew him, that he was replaying every detail back in his brain, because she was sure he remembered every detail, and wondering where he had misstepped. He had always hated to lose, leaving the courtroom before she could do anything or say anything to make him feel better. He took losses hard, because he put everything he had, all of heart into everything. She wasn't supposed to notice that, but she did, and she supposed that was where this had all started. She knew that he was wondering, in every possible scenario, what could have been done differently. She knew, because she knew him, and because when she had walked this road she'd done the same thing.

She wondered if he was mad that they wouldn't let him come back yet. She wondered if he was ever going to come back. She was prepared for it, knew that the last time he had been through a traumatic experience, the last time that he felt untethered and disenchanted by the justice system, the last time he found himself unable to reach out and hold onto anyone besides himself when he was so shattered by the world, that he had left, physically insulating himself from her while he searched for an anchor and righted himself in a world that hadn't met his own standard of justice. 

She knew him, so well, so she was prepared for the possibility that she was going to have carry on without him again. And she knew from experience that she could. She could do anything. That she was strong enough to carry on, to live, to even be happy. She'd done it once before. Twice now, really. Elliot had left her, and while she didn't think she'd ever get past the anger over the way he had chosen to do it, she understood that she didn't hunt him down for the same reason he didn't stay. Because of pride, because to admit it all would force them to acknowledge how wrong it all was, how wrong they were for eachother. How much that very wrongness had influenced their desire in the first place. That if he had come back for her, she wouldn't have wanted him, not really, not in the long run, because she would have known that he was the kind of man who would do something like that. And he wasn't. He was a good man. But he wasn't hers, had never really been hers. She knew that all of the parts of her that had wanted him were the parts that were weak, and that if she had allowed herself to have him, as she almost did, she would have fallen into the chasm of that weakness. It would have changed her. Him leaving her did so as well. It made her strong. Forced her to stand on her own two feet, just as she always had, and understand her own strength. They were fire and pain and turmoil, and she had had enough chaos in her life. 

So when it had happened the second time, when the second man she loved had walked away from her, she didn't fight it, didn't beg. She didn't beg for so many reasons. Because she was older now, and had the perspective to understand that if he stayed, if he was weak, that he would fall into the chasm of that weakness. That he never backed down from a fight. She understood that if she allowed her need for him to override her love for him, that if she asked him to stay he would have. Because he always did what asked of him. Because for him, love wasn't just a feeling, it was something that was entrenched in everything he did. Elliot had left her so he wouldn't have to face the consequences of staying with her. Rafael had left because she had dragged him from the edge, into the middle of it all, made him fell all the pain and mess, and that he had to take what she had thrust on him, and go back out to the edge where he could see clearer than he ever had before she had pulled him into it with her in the first place. That he was never really leaving her. That it hadn't been about her, but him and what he could do in the short time he had to make the world better. She respected that, deeply, she just wished that it didnt make her love him more, because it all hurt too much. They had both hurt her, but she was old enough to see the difference in them, and appreciate it, even if it broke her heart.

She walked out of the precinct, headed for his office. She needed to see it, to look at it all for herself. She had reconstructed the scene in her head a thousand times, and she hoped that if she saw it she could get some peace. Despite the events of the last week, the cleaning crew didn't even look up when she walked past them and up the stairs. She shook her head. The futility of it all, of how a person's need for a sense of security threatened their actual security struck her as she made her way to his office. 

She walked into the reception area, saw the low light. Carmen's desk was still a little askew, some of her knick knacks pushed to the side. She knew the room had only stopped being a crime scene this morning. She remembered the picture frame in Carmen's hands. Reconstructed the scene in her head as she walked to his office, quietly pushed the door open.

She saw the bare floor, where the carpet had been cut, ripped away. She shuddered. The bare space was so large. She thought of the two of them, there on the floor, and she hurt for him in a way that was clearer now, because now she could see it from the edge and feel it in the middle of the room.

"You're not going to surprise attack me, assault me, and then make a quick getaway are you?" 

She turned, saw him sitting on the end of the couch that was closest to her, his chin in his hand, two fingers extended over his exhausted face. He was wearing old sweat pants and a faded sweatshirt, with the sleeves rolled up. He looked wilted, and if it was possible, thinner in the short span of time since she'd seen him. Though she supposed she was unaccustomed to seeing him so lightly dressed.

It struck her that she wasn't even a little shocked that he was there, that she had been coming here all along to find him.

He continued without waiting for an answer. "Because that's been a strange habit of your's lately, and I'm very tired so I don't think I'll handle the disappointment well." He said it in a bored, almost dry tone.

Despite everything, all of it, the pain and grief and uncertainty, she laughed. He was looking at her with a small, sad smile on his face, and his eyes filled.

She sniffed. "No. But in fairness, I didn't plan to any of the times that I did." She walked over, dropped onto the middle cushion. He stayed in the same position, with his right elbow in the arm of the couch, but he dropped his left hand onto her leg. She put her hand on top of his, and they stared at the bare space together for a while.

She noticed the scotch bottle sitting next him on the side table, his glass mostly empty. Nudged his leg with hers. Wordlessly he reached for another glass, dumped the small amount she usually drank in. She bobbed her chin a little and he raised an eyebrow, but tipped the bottle again, adding more. Dumped more into his own glass before he put it back.

They both settled back into the cushions, shoulder to shoulder, stared at the floor. 

She let the calm wash over her, let his presence and the scotch do its thing. She looked at his profile, took in his tired face. 

"What are we supposed to do now?" 

He left his face in his hand, but turned his head so he could look at her. Let a gust of air out of his chest, shrugged. "I don't know." He looked miserable. She understood that. 

"We can't go back." 

She nodded. They locked hands.

She gestured to his clothes. 

"These aren't your usual duds."

"Hm. Well, I'm a trauma victim. I do erratic things like leave the house in my pajamas." There was a pause. She looked up, already knowing he was giving her side eye. "What's your excuse?" 

She had been so conflicted before, knowing that she needed him like that, but now with his soft sweatshirt against her arm and the scotch in her hand, in a spot where she had always felt at home, it was all gentler, maybe even a little funny. 

She shrugged. "I do that when people don't call me back."

"I'm not complaining. In fact excuse me while I go throw my phone into the Hudson." 

She smiled, leaned into his side just a little. Glanced at his arm, noticed the cotton ball with tape over it, just at the crook.

"Giving blood now?" She ran her finger over the small pad.

He looked down at his arm, her hand. "Oh no, I had to have tests done." He shrugged. Sipped his scotch. Looked at her puzzled face, his own twisting into a grin. He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees.

"Apparently, its "highly irregular," his two fingers came up in air quotes, "to not receive tests for blood disorders immediately after that much of someone else's blood has been on you." He shrugged, sipped his drink. 

She chuckled, quietly. "Well, you would have known that if you'd gone to the hospital."

"I was a low maintenance trauma victim."

She couldn't believe she was actually laughing in this room, if even quietly, in front of the bare space.

"You are the opposite of low maintenance." 

He smiled, peaked over his shoulder at her. She sighed, dropped her hand on his back and let her chin rest on his shoulder. They stayed like that. 

She didn't move but shifted a little so she could see his face. 

"Why did you really come back?" 

He looked at her in that way he did sometimes, the look that left her stomach feeling light even before she loved him. Or had known she loved him. He shifted, turned so he could look at her. His expression shifted a little, his brow wrinkling as he looked at her, puzzled. She thought of Dodds and Rita, standing in her office.

It all clicked in her head. "I didn't know."

His expression didn't change. "How could you not?" 

She didn't answer, just laid a hand on his face, let the feeling wash over her. The pain and turmoil and absence that had accompanied her all her life, the exact things that he seemed to always work to avoid, dulled. The uncertainty slid away, and the only thing that was left was peace. He had always brought that to her, just by being him.

She left her hand on his face. "I hate that you were alone while you went through all that." He looked tired, drunk, like he was still going through it.

She was surprised by the suppressed grin on his face, the flash of humor. He looked away from her, back at the floor. 

"I actually wasn't alone. Not the first night." 

She leaned back to look at him, a little confused, wrinkled her brow.

He was desperately trying not to laugh, put his drink up to his mouth to cover the smile.

"Uh, Fin stayed at my apartment, wouldn't leave." She felt the chuckle vibrating where her hand was on his back.

Felt it rumble in her own, at the absurdity of the image. 

"Seriously?" 

He looked back at her, and he lost control a little, the grin spreading fully.

"Yeah." He looked back at the floor, but she could actually feel his smile. "Sat on my couch. I asked him to go, he just said "naw" and told me to "do me," that he was just going to chill." They were both laughing now, shaking with the silence of it. 

He remembered that he had been so crushingly exhausted that when the rage had simmered in his chest, it just seemed to burn through him so quickly that he was left with nothing.

"Somehow I'm not shocked." She was both amused and endeared by the loyalty of the gesture.

He looked back at the floor, took a sip of his drink.

"When I woke up the next morning, he was in the exact same spot on my couch." He paused. "He was watching The Real Housewives."

"Stop."

He pinched his nose, shaking with the inability to control himself now that he could see the absurdity of it all on her face. 

"He wasn't even embarrassed." 

She chuckled, sighed, leaning back, feeling cleansed by the laughter, by the simplicity of Fin's care. He leaned back with her, so they sat shoulder to shoulder. They were silent for a moment. 

"I think he ate the rest of my cereal," he muttered it into his glass, smiling when he felt the intense shaking of her quiet laughter.

She couldn't resist.

"Did he stay?"

He shook his head still smiling, staring forward.

"Nope. Just stood up, said "You good?" I nodded, and he left." He paused. Just to make her laugh again, he added, "He left the Real Housewives playing."

It worked.

They sat there for a long while, and she pulled her feet up onto the couch, pressed her knees into him. He dropped his arm across her legs. She was willing to stay there forever, not saying anything. But she saw the look that clouded his face after he had stopped chuckling. And her heart went out to him, because she remembered the guilt of surviving.

"You know the guilt, that's normal, but Dodds's would have hated himself if this had ended in reverse."

"As opposed to me hating myself because it didn't?" He didn't look at her, but his hand was still on her leg, lightly rubbing it.

She rubbed the back of his head. "Its harder on us, the ones that get left behind." She dug for the only words that had helped her when she had gone through a painfully similar experience. Remembered that the simplest phrase had worked the best. 

"It was Dodds's time. It wasn't yours."

His chest constricted at that, and she didn't move to hug him, just continued stroking his neck while he let a little of it out, pinching his nose to control himself. She knew now that he didn't need anyone to take care of him, that he had never needed anyone to take care of him. He just needed her to be there with him.

"Sorry." 

She applied pressure on his neck until he looked at her. For good measure she laid her hand on his chin to keep him there. "You don't have to be sorry for the way that you get through this. I'm sorry if I made you feel otherwise." 

Rita had called him that morning, when he had been laying on his couch with one foot on the floor, staring at the ceiling. She had harangued him for fifteen minutes, yelling about an impending case that they were opposing counsel on that didn't even have a court date set yet. He had let her yell, not even bothering to move. When she was done, he paused, said, "Better?" and it was silent on the other end for a while before she hung up on him. He thought of that now, of that strange woman who was not exactly his friend, but his mirror. Looked at the person sitting next to him, offering more than the solitude that was so easy to grow accustomed to. Felt his mind calm, the dull ache of his thoughts dissipate, instead felt the calm in his chest. 

"I didn't mean to shut you out." He was intently looking at her. "I was just in the middle of it all, and I had no control. You can't see as much when you aren't on the edge." He shrugged.

Her eyes pricked with tears. He seemed to always understand everything about her in a way that made her feel seen and understood, even when he didn't know it.

"You felt exposed." She kicked herself a little.

He nodded, and she could see the relief on his face, that she understood.

She huffed out a breath. "I am so sorry." 

His hand came out, absently pushed her hair behind her ear. "Its ok." Just like that. "We only know what we have." They were both painfully aware that once you have to learn self-reliance, it was a hard lesson to unlearn. 

They settled into a comfortable silence, content to just be for a moment. She knew she'd learned something over the years though, even if she sometimes forgot it, because she understood now that even if there was desire and love and passion between two people, that on some level, it should just be this easy, and that she had never had that before. 

"Are you leaving?" She looked at him. She just needed to know. 

His eyebrows drew down. Then relaxed as he actually contemplated the question. 

"No." He sighed. "My therapist thinks I'm still offering penance for Drew. And now for Dodds."

She looked at him. 

"Really? A therapist?" 

His eyes slid over to look at her, irritated. She smiled. "They're making me." He gestured around his office, indicating the department. She laughed.

"How many sessions have you had?" 

He took a sip of his drink. "Two. We spent two 50 minute sessions staring at eachother in almost total silence. Its all very productive."

She nudged him until he shifted, settled into his side more comfortably. 

"What did you do when he told you how you felt?" She knew he wouldn't take that well.

He took another sip, smiled into his glass.

"I made him cry."

"Jesus, Barba." She was fully laughing, her hand covering her face.

He brushed his lips against her head.

"My new therapist starts Monday." Smiled when she lost control briefly, loudly laughing before the guilt of the bare floor quieted her.

"You made the poor kid quit?"

He twisted his mouth, swallowed the laugh.

"He was seventy." 

She chuckled quietly until it settled, the confidence that his presence provided making her wonder why she had ever doubted him. She sat up and gently took hold of his chin, kissed him, lightly, their mouths brushing over eachother's, and settled her forehead on his. 

There was no need to say it, because it was already there, had always been there. She had just needed to drag him into the middle of it all until he felt it, and had had to go to the edge herself so she could see it.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One Year Later 
> 
>  
> 
> Whoops. Wasn't quite done. There's this chapter and one more.

She was standing on the courthouse steps, literally still and dumbstruck. She had to be mistaken, or McCoy had to be mistaken. He wasn't- he wouldn't do that, not without telling her. But he did. She knew that it wasn't all smooth sailing, that what was happening between them wasn't exactly ethical, or even really definable. They both knew that. It had made the last year of, whatever this was, fairly complex and very confusing. She would have liked to believe that she had outgrown the tendency to breach boundaries, to cross the line and let her emotions cloud her judgement. 

But that hadn't stopped them from starting, and then repeating the endless cycle of resisting, succumbing to what they wanted, the avoidance that followed it and the eventual repeat of the weakness that neither was strong enough to resist. Rinse and repeat. 

She was knocked off her feet by the helpless sadness, because she felt betrayed not only by his choice, but the fact that she was the only one out here, indescribably happy and desperate for it all to continue.

But he didn't feel that way.

"Shame about Mr. Barba. But we all do wish him well at the ACLU."

What the hell? 

The new knowledge had her revising the last year in her head, making her wonder at what point he decided that this was torture. If it always had been for him. They literally talked about everything, or she thought they had. Had she been dragging him along this whole time, forcing him into this dynamic by using his feelings against him? 

Fuck that.

He was there the whole time, picking fights with her and letting the tension build until it had cracked, roughly a month after the shooting. They had both known it was there, but neither of them really knew what to do with it. So it sat there, unspoken but acknowledged. Any thoughts she had that they might easily slide into more were never really entertained, because she knew him. Knew that love wasn't an epiphany followed by bliss. And she didn't even know what she wanted from him. Knew that she loved him, that she was in love with him, but didn't know what they were supposed to do about it. She knew that she had a tendency to act on impulse, to breach appropriate boundaries when she was emotionally invested, so she had forced herself to give him space, knew that she wanted to approach whatever it was she was feeling with a clear head.

That hadn't so much worked.

Love was an oddity. It didn't wait because you were broken, or stall to give you time to heal. It didnt make you whole or change your nature. It didn't sit dormant while you gave yourself over to a higher purpose, while you prioritized work that was arguably more important than it. Their naive belief that it might had gotten them into this mess in the first place, but people had an imperfect tendency to forget inconvenient details, to perpetuate suffering that felt too good in the moment, and they were no different.

She should have been expecting it to bubble up, unhinged, completely unchecked and unbridled, during a fight. They always seemed to cut eachother when they were mad. They had that in common, an inability to separate themselves from the work. So when he had come back to work, edgey and newly frustrated by it all, he slapped wall after wall up to keep her at bay. 

She didn't respond to that with a lot of grace.

She could plainly see the changes. There was an angry edge to him, something boiling in there that was looking for a fight. Carmen didn't come back to work, and the rolling onslaught of terrified assistants were enough to clue her into his new demeanor. He had always been prickly and impatient, and Carmen had handled him beautifully, taking his bad moods with his good moods. This however wasn't simply a transitioning of roles, but his desperate attempt to quickly build the carefully constructed walls of his stringent boundaries that had taken him a lifetime to establish. And it largely worked. His colleagues saw what they wanted to see, and he settled into a routine with them that was only slightly angrier, less amused than before.

But she kept pushing him. 

She knew he was struggling. She kept a careful eye on the bottle of scotch in his office, noticed the level dropping with an alarming regularity. He always seemed loopy with fatigue, and she was terrified to know whether or not with something else. Maybe alcohol or drugs. He was sharp, so he noticed her noticing. Her concern seemed to endlessly irritate him, so he picked fights with her. Professional fights. And when that didn't satisfy his need to expel his fury, to push her concern away, he picked personal fights with her. She would like to say that she was patient and understanding, that she waited out his anger and frustration. She didn't. She was frustrated and needy and that made her angry too. He was floating out there by himself and she was powerless to do anything about it. So she got pissed. She didn't overexamine the feeling, just rode the satisfying ease of it all. 

His newest assistant, a young man who had aspirations of a career in law, had actually hauled ass and cleared out for the night when they started fighting in his office. It probably didn't help that Barba had thrown a packet of legal documents at him earlier that day, but she hadn't known that at the time.

He was dressed as he always was, clean and sharp, but she didn't miss the red in his eyes, the light grey shadow at his jaw. Her stomach had twisted, but she slammed it down with a healthy dose of rage. It felt cleaner.

"If you don't get me tangible forensic evidence, I'm not entertaining you anymore." He was flicking his leather folder closed, dismissing her as he stood to leave. 

He did that now. Said things that he always said before, but deliberately chose to phrase the statements in ways that diminished her, made her angry.

She stretched a little, allowed the rage to roll through her. She was here because he'd left a message with her goddamn detectives saying that the evidence they gave him was ruled inadmissible. She listened to the message twice, heard his blatant irritation. Stormed over here without much thought. She wasn't even through the door before he checked her wide, angry eyes, and dismissed them. His words sounded exactly like him, cold and calculating. But it was the reckless glee in his eyes that was new. He wanted to fight. Wanted to piss her off.

She breathed through her nose, refusing to give him the satisfaction. "This case is going to trial. I don't need your attitude, it isn't my fault the judge ruled the way he did." She was incredulous as he made his way for the door. "Are you so eager to punch out for the day?" 

He was midway through putting his jacket on, stopped. She felt the hot satisfaction in her stomach when he all but threw it back on his chair, tossed his hands up and let them drop back onto his desk. 

"Sure." He was so easily angered recently, but it still felt good to hear the rage. "Let's get the dry erase markers and unpack that plucky can-do spirit of yours, that'll work!" 

She physically felt the shock of anger, saw it reflected on his face. "Oh fuck you. Don't stand there and act like I'm naive because I care." 

"Oh good. Olivia Benson has come to save us all. Hallelujah." He stared back at her, daring her.

She felt the well of something in her chest, refused to give it any credence. Spat back. "No, no. I'm sure it's all much better if we repress everything. That always ends great, you maladjusted automaton."

He sucked some air in through his nose and she could have sworn he almost smirked. He was actually satisfied. She almost ripped his face off. 

"Good." He nodded. "Now we're getting somewhere. Because this patient," he was biting off each word, "careful, saintly bullshit is getting old." 

He didn't swear. Almost ever. And in the last month she'd heard him utter an expletive at least twice as often as she'd otherwise heard from him in the entire time she'd known him. Her eyes subconsciously went to the nearly empty bottle of liquor. The concern and love simmered, so she focused on his words instead, let the rage overwhelm her.

"Fine." She felt a little unhinged as she moved closer to him, being careful to slowly hurl her anger at him so he knew she meant it. "You dont want my patience, my understanding, my-" she swallowed something caught in her throat, "I'm done with it." She kept moving toward him, satisfied when the shock came over his face, as he took a step back. "You can fuck yourself, I'm done trying to help you and make it ok for you. Deal. With. It."

He was smart enough to read between her words, understand them for all the reckless anger in her eyes, her boiling rage as she crowded him. She was calling him weak, implying that he wasn't man enough to sucker through the pain. He felt the rage like a warm blanket. 

He leaned against his desk, met her eyes, barely six inches from his own. "So." He smiled. Actually smiled. She almost punched him. "That's your problem. Lieutenant Fix-it Benson just can't accept the fact that maybe she can't wave her magic wand and make it better?" 

He held up a hand before she could answer. "Or maybe, I'm supposed to want to be in love with you. That's it. Yeah." He gave her a slightly unhinged smile, nodded like he was doing a cross, ready to go in for the kill. "I definitely want to join the long list of inappropriate work relationships that chase you until you get bored." He stood from his position leaning on his desk, his own eyes now filled with the reckless anger she could feel.

She belted him.

She fully slapped him with her considerable strength, and the sound was satisfying. She felt it ringing in through her hand, all the way down to her stomach. 

She didn't feel sorry, just crowded into his space, shoving her face into his before he could recover from the shock of her slap.

"So we're calling me a whore with boundary issues now?" She didn't even care that he seemed satisfied. "Fuck y-"

He grabbed her hair, pulled her against him, and crushed his mouth painfully against hers. The sound she made was part indignation, part groan, and her hands slammed into his chest and grabbed at his vest, dragging him closer to her as his bit her lip, his hands digging into her hips, her backside, forcing her closer. Her hands moved into his hair as he pulled his mouth from hers, biting and sucking at her neck, moving down to her chest as he backed her into the closed door. Slammed her into it. She was swearing at him, cursing and moaning, her hips bucking as his hand unbuckled her belt, unzipped her pants, pushing his hand ruthlessly into her panties, his fingers scraping just where she wanted him. She was angry, at him, at herself for the noise that escaped her. His mouth was back on hers and she took the opportunity to retaliate by painfully biting his mouth, heard him groan as he pushed his hips against her leg. 

"This is what you want right?" His fingers pushed further into her underwear, she arched her back trying to move him further in. He wasn't kissing her anymore, just watching her from a centimeter away, his rage and arousal puffing out in short bursts of air.

"You didn't come here about a fucking case." His fingers swept into her, so quickly she bucked, moaned. "You want me to fuck you?" She tossed her head back, trying to get some air so she could tell him to go fuck himself. Leaned forward and trapped his mouth with hers instead. Forced the filthy kiss on him, sucking his tongue and crushing her lips to his until she got the leverage to bite him. He groaned, and she could feel him, fully hard against her. 

"If you're going to, shut the fuck up and fuck me." She squirmed a little where he had her pinned to the wall, tried to use her hips to adjust the position of his fingers, that were right where she wanted them to be but unmoving. She almost screamed.

He crushed his mouth against hers, forced the air out of her lungs while his fingers pushed further inside her. She shamelessly ground against his hand, moaned into his mouth while his other hand stroked up her body, over her breast. Her hands were digging into his shoulders, pushing bruises into his skin. They were both breathless, angry without any reason that could be examined in this state. 

She was desperately tugging on his shirt, grinding her hips against his fingers, making noises that hardened him painfully. 

"You want to me to fuck you." He was still ruthlessly working her, refusing to touch exactly where she needed. "You always wanted it. Even when you were pretending with the assholes that chased you, you wanted me to fuck you." 

The anger and desire pooled in her core, swelled in her chest. Her hands slapped his chest, while her hips pumped.

"Fuck you." She dragged him back for another painful kiss, bit him until she felt the gasp in his rib cage. 

"Say it." His fingers stopped. She was grinding her hips, desperately trying to keep the delicious pace. She let the arousal push all of the deeper feelings from her. Focused on the respite of it.

"Say you want me to fuck you." He pushed one long finger into her, impossibly far. She moaned, looking toward the ceiling.

"Yes." Her chest was heaving, she felt like she was actually going to explode. She arched off the wall, ground herself into him, his hand. "I want you to fuck me." She spat the words, pissed at both them.

He slammed his mouth back onto hers, pushing until there wasn't a centimeter of space between them while he ruthlessly worked his fingers into her, pumping wildly while he found her, put pressure on her. He didn't stop kissing her as she came, using his hips to keep her upright against the door. She just clung to his hair, whimpering as she let it crash over her, desperately kissing him back.

She slid down the wall a little, her hands on his shoulders, and his satisfied smirk forced her back up, standing, eager to even the playing field. She tore at his belt buckle, tugging at it until it was loosely hanging from from his pants. She watched his eyes go blind, knew that she could push every thought from his head, felt the power of it. 

She unzipped his pants, reached in an tugged him free. He went almost completely silent, and she felt the satisfaction of it all the way through her. 

"What's the matter," she pushed her mouth a centimeter from his, "nothing smart to say?"

She wrapped a hand around him, gave him a few rough strokes. His head dropped onto her shoulder and she could hear his ragged breathes. His hands stilled where they were roughly rubbing up her sides. She felt the power of it, slid down and took him in her mouth, relishing the shocked strangled sound he made as his hand fisted in her hair, pulled. She was fully prepared to suck him to death, give him a taste of his own medicine, letting her tongue stroke his head, enjoying the filthy satisfaction of his desperate moans.

But he grabbed her hair, tugged her until she stood, and crushed his body back on hers, pushing his tongue back into her mouth until she was grinding against his hips. He broke the kiss, stared at her. "We're fucking. I'm not doing anything less." She bit his lip to shut him up.

His hands were working to pushed her unzipped pants off her hips, groaning a little when his hands brushed over her underwear. He pushed those down as well, and she shimmied them to the floor while she kicked her shoes off. He ripped the buttons from the holes of her shirt, pushing it apart to find her breasts encased in her practical bra. He nipped the flesh there, so she had to pause in her effort to unbutton his shirt, settling for pushing it open to the middle and dragging his undershirt up so her hands could run up onto his chest. His hand went back to her, and he pushed two fingers into her, put pressure in the perfect spot while she cried out, pumped her hips. One of her legs came up, desperately tried to anchor his body to hers as he shoved her over the edge.

He gave her no time to recover, grinding her into the wall with his hips as he pushed his erection into her. Covered her mouth, her gasp, in a bruising kiss. She still had one leg on the floor, her pants and her underwear under her foot, and one leg wrapped around his waist. His hands scraped at her sides, digging into her hips as he slammed into her, cursing as she came again, begging him not to stop. He watched her, his nose against hers while he repeatedly slammed into her, grinding ruthlessly while she convulsed, his satisfaction plain. She let the rage slip mix with the simple physicality of her orgasm, focused on it, because everything else was too overwhelming. 

She ignored her tired muscles, eased her leg down to the floor. Felt him, fully erect, as he slipped out of her. Tried to control her heaving breathes. Settled for a painful kiss, only breaking it to bite at his chin. She anchored her hands on his shoulders, moved them off the wall and shoved him onto the couch, straddling him without taking him in.

"Liv-" he attempted to maneuver them, find purchase under her.

She anchored him between her thighs. "What? What do you want?" She ruthlessly ground on him, leaned down and trapped him in a surprisingly soft kiss, pulling the groan out of him while she slowly worked the rest of the buttons off his shirt. She could feel him shaking, felt the satisfaction roll through her. 

She broke the kiss, pulled back a centimeter. "Do you want me to fuck you?" She kept grinding, but refused to join them.

"Liv- I-"

She wasn't feeling particularly merciful, and the arousal that was swimming through her blocked everything else out, so she leaned in, licked his mouth, felt his hands fist on her hips.

"Say you want me to fuck you." She got distracted in the rythym she'd set as his fingers snaked up under her legs, found her. He leveraged his opportunity, flipped them, so she was pressed on the couch.

"I want to fuck you." 

He grabbed her legs, hitched her hips up and pierced into her. She wrapped her legs around his waist. Fixed her teeth on his shoulder while she shuddered through another orgasm, his hips setting a brutal rythym inside her. She made a small gasping noise everytime he thrust, and he leaned over her, swallowed that noise with his mouth while he beat into her. 

She arched her back, heedless of any potential person that may be nearby.

"Come in me. Come in me." She wasn't sure if she was begging or challenging.

He dropped his head on her shoulder, bit it as he pushed his hand between them, found her swollen. Pushed pressure on her until she tumbled over with him, lifting her leg in a desperate attempt to push him in further. She cried out as they came, and his hand slapped over her mouth, biting his own moan into her shoulder.

Afterward, when they had shifted, and the realization of what they did, in his office, not exactly quietly, during an hour when it was still possible for a dedicated ADA to still be roaming the floor, settled over them, there had been guilt, and a little shame. And a healthy dose of anger. 

He was tucking his shirt back in while she rebuttoned her own, and his eyes flicked up off the floor and met hers. She ignored the clogged feeling in her lungs. 

"That was... sorry." He was zipping his pants, and her head snapped up. 

"Sorry? Don't. I was just as much a part of that." He winced a little at her tone.

He looked at her a little desperately and she ignored the feeling in her stomach. "Right. Still. I shouldn't have-"

She threw her hands up. "Listen. It was bad timing. Let's forget it." She almost laughed at the incredulous look on his face, his eyebrows raised as he glanced toward the couch like he was never going to look at it the same way. 

"I'm serious Barba. Let's just forget it, focus on the case."

He cleared his throat. 

"Ok."

She ignored the slightly wounded look on his face.

Her implication had been clear. It wasn't the right time. But the problem was, it never seemed to be the right time. He seemed to only admit the depth of his feelings for her when he was emboldened by an imminent exit, and she seemed to only do so when she was threatened with the reality of exactly that. And there was always the work. His appointment as EADA meant that he almost exclusively tried higher profile, complex cases, making the disclosing of a relationship complicated at best, and possibly downright catastrophic. They both knew that once they disclosed he would have to recuse himself from all cases involving her, halting the judicial process on half a dozen cases at any given time. Not to mention that he would be reassigned, taking him off her detail. It was all too convoluted to navigate, so they just didn't. Forced it down, back where it had sat for six years and carried on.

That worked for a little over two weeks. 

Then it had been more deliberate, a choice to leave his office after she caught him off guard, kissing him in the middle of a discussion about statutes, and they went to his apartment where they fell onto his bed and came loudly, harshly, with their bodies entwined. The shame wasn't there afterward, as they had at the very least managed to hold themselves together until reaching one of their residences.

After that they fell into this strange little routine, and she spent every other moment worrying about him. The sunken eyes, the increasing weight loss. She had been watching from the gallery when the court stenographer had dropped a box of cartridges, the crack of the noise making Rita Calhoun and Rafael practically jump out of their skins in tandem. And the rage was always there, simmering under the surface. 

He picked fights with her, yelled at her detectives and scared the daylights out of every member of staff at the DA's office. Despite their physical closeness he wouldn't let her in. She held onto him when she could, took her anger out on him when he wouldn't let her, and they fell into a dysfunctional pattern that she knew she was party to, because she had come to crave those bursts of weakness. 

About a month and a half later, they had had sex in her bathroom while her son slept, at his apartment multiple times and in his office on one other occasion. During all of this, they compartmentalized the cases, and worked as they always had. She had to admit, she took his lead on that, as he seemed to be a master at separating pieces of himself from others. It took her a while to read him, and it shocked her that she didn't already know everything about him. But she started to recognize a flick of his eyes, or a restless shift of his shoulders, signs that his mind had wandered to something less than professional. At first she thought these were new tells, but she eventually recognized them as habits that he had always had. She just hadn't known what they meant.

She knew that this was wrong, that they should stop or disclose, but she couldn't bring herself to do either. This was easier, and frankly thrilling, so she rode the wave of his intense emotions, ignoring her helplessness in not being able to help him in any other way. This was something she could navigate, a way to tether him.

It was a Friday, and she had promised Noah a movie night and ice cream, so when she went to his office to drop off new evidence she brought her son with her on impulse, figuring the child would act as a barrier so she wasn't delayed. Her apprehension eased into her as his sneakered feet smacked decisively on the last step to Rafael's floor. He was chattering and over excited, and Rafael had been erratic lately. Noah hadn't seen him at all since his return, with their encounter in his office happening so soon after his arrival and then the shooting, and then the subsequent encounters. It hadn't occured to her that he wouldn't want to deal with the excitement of a seven year old.

Noah of course didn't care. She winced when he swung the door open, letting it crash against the windowed wall. 

"Hi Rafa!! Hi!" She made a halfhearted attempt to grab for him, redirect him, but he was already moving.

Rafael had been curled over his desk, the irritation in his body ever present as it was these days. 

But his head snapped up, and she didn't even see a trace of exhaustion when his eyebrows shot up, his features flashing to a shocked smile as his he pushed his chair back.

"Hi buddy." He sounded a little stunned as Noah crashed into him, wrapped his small body around him. She watched him sag into the hug, actually take what her son hurled at him.

Noah leaned back but didn't move. 

"I came to work with mom. We have evidence." He sounded proud. 

She stepped forward, schooled her features. 

"Sorry." She nodded her head toward Noah, who was still tucked into his arms.

"Its ok." She felt a warmth spreading through her at his wide open eyes, the easy expression on his face that she missed these days.

"Raf." Noah bumped him a little, demanding attention.

Rafael looked back down at the boy, tightening his arms to dip his head over the child. "Oh my God you got bigger." Rafael crushed him in a hug, making the boy squeal. "Stop it immediately." Noah continued to squeal as Rafael rained kisses on his face and ran his fingers over the boy's belly to tickle him. 

She tried to school the smile from her face, wandered to the window as they fought about how tall Noah was allowed to get. 

"We're watching movies. Can you come over?" Noah's hands were still entwined around his neck. They were still completely wrapped around eachother, and she hadn't seen the cloudy expression on his face since they arrived. 

She took her opening.

"It looks like you two have some catching up to do. You should probably come over." She figured he would get irritated at the manipulative nature of her suggestion, but he only hesitated briefly, looked at Noah who was squirming to get closer to him, and shrugged.

"Ok."


	15. Chapter 15

After that, they fell into an unspoken routine of sorts, where a week wouldn't pass without him at her apartment. She grew entirely too accustomed to the sound of the two of them arguing on the couch, Noah giggling as he used his cold feet as retaliation against Rafael's teasing over his mispronunciation of his vocabulary words. They always seemed like magnets, completing homework, watching television, reading, talking and playing wrapped around eachother, Noah never seemed happy unless he was tucked up around Rafael. 

"How old are you?" Noah was laying on him, his head resting on Rafael's chest on one end of the couch, both of them with one eye on the television. They were having one their winding conversations that led nowhere, where Noah asked question after question, attempting to find a fact that Rafael didn't know. It had been about six months, and all three of them were entirely too used to his presence around the apartment. He never slept over on a work night, and she never asked him to, but it was tacitly agreed upon that he didn't leave during the weekends.

"How old do you think I am?" Rafael was was beating a low drumming pattern on the boy's back, lulling him into sleep. 

Noah's head came up, considering the question while his hand twisted around Rafael's loosened tie, wrinkling it. "Well, Jesse's mom is twenty-five-" Rafael fully laughed, Olivia lightly kicked him with her foot, hiding her own laugh in her wine glass. Noah looked a little perplexed but pressed on, "and my friend Kyle's mom is thirty..." he looked at Rafael apprehensively. "Are you thirty? Are you and mommy the same age? 

Rafael eased the boy's head back down on his chest, hoping to redirect him towards sleep. "About." 

"So you're thirty." He said it decisively.

"Precisely. Thirty. Excellent guess."

Rafael eyes came up over the little boy's head, and he shot an eyebrow up. She shrugged, suppressed the smile. His foot came up and nudged her right back.

"Ok, papito, we covered dinosaurs, geography, how clouds work," he paused, looked at her with an incredulous grin, "Hitler, and how they get soda cans closed. I think its time for bed." When Noah didn't argue and just burrowed in a little further, he stood up with him. She didn't go with, just tilted her head back and kissed her boy on their way past. They had fallen into a Friday routine, and Rafael always put him to bed. She knew that the conversation would carry on for a while, that the little boy had masterfully discovered that the best way to distract Rafael was by making him talk. She had had to go into Noah's room, and wake Rafael up on multiple occasions because they had interrupted their book by winding through a question Noah had, falling asleep together as they debated who was better between the X-Men and the Justice League. 

She knew she was getting spoiled, that she couldn't have her cake and eat it too, but she couldn't make herself stop their routine. She got to have him at work, their dynamic always pushing her to be better, and have him at home, where he became an increasing fixture. He only stayed over on the weekends, but he was at her apartment with an ever increasing regularity, coming over two, and three nights out of the week. He never detracted from her time with her son, he only ever seemed to add to it, unless he was taking the burden of her routine off her, by playing with, reading to and endlessly talking to her child. She noticed the subtle changes, the easing of tension, she watched him as he slowly uncoiled. They never acknowledged it, because it was never the right time, but their affair had evolved into an effortless entwining of their lives, and he so seamlessly fit into hers that she didnt even notice it happening. It became so easy that she felt off kilter on the nights that he wasn't there, and she was briefly supplanted back to her old routine of dinner, homework, stories and bedtime, alone, without him there to ease the burden, or simply to add to it all with his presence.

He wandered back into the livingroom a half an hour later, scotch in his hand. Noah was getting better and better at extending his bedtime routine. Because it was Friday, and she was quietly thrilled by it all, she never pointed it out.

They continued having sex, in her room after Noah went to bed, occasionally at his apartment when they found the time, but these moments were newer, the ones that she craved when he wasn't there. The ones that made her entirely too aware that they had crossed a line. 

It had all gotten too easy, once they figured out a way to subvert the reality of their closeness, and she shamelessly took for granted that once Noah was in bed it was her turn. That her son had so easily pushed past those adult barriers, and she got to reap the benefits. 

He put his drink on the coffee table and eased onto her, settled himself with his head on her chest. She shifted down, changed the channel to the news so they could get angry at it together, and their legs tangled on the couch. They spent their weekend nights like this, watching the news with their drinks forgotten on the coffee table, wrapped around eachother. Sometimes she sat between his arms and fell asleep there, and sometimes he stretched out on her, and let her rub his back as she was doing tonight. But they always ended their nights on the couch, arguing about the news, quietly laughing at the absurd statements that a seven year old makes and talking about everything that popped into one of their minds. Intimacy had never been their problem, on any accounts, and now that they had broached that last barrier of carefully placed boundaries, she didn't even hesitate to fully take what she could from him, despite the ethical conundrum of it all.

She started to get the sense that she was in serious trouble about eight months into it all, when the three of them had been walking home after dinner. All three of them were debating the merits of Noah's individual school subjects, Noah attempting to convince them both that math was an unnecessary evil.

"Figuring out what to tip your waiter." Rafael threw it out, as they crossed the road, Noah's hand firmly in her own.

She hit his arm. "Good one. Um... baking."

"That doesn't count!" Noah was marching between them.

"You've apparently never had flat cookies or underbaked cupcakes before." Rafael tugged the boy's hood over his head.

"I can just buy those." The little boy muttered it at the ground.

"Oh, I use it in my job." That got Noah's interest, because he currently wanted to be a police officer.

"How so?" He seemed skeptical. 

"It helps with evidence, and sometimes I have to figure out distances..." she shot Rafael a desperate smile while he laughed at her, realized that she had backed herself into a corner.

"Oh, it also makes you smarter." He distracted the boy's attention. "If you're good at math, it makes your brain stronger, so you retain facts easily, you read better. The brain is a muscle just like everything else. You have to exercise it."

"Ha. Yes. It makes you smarter." She reached down, squeezed her son to her side.

"What does retain mean?"

"Uh..." Rafael raised his eyes up, blew out a breath. "To keep in your memory. See if you can retain that." He tugged Noah's zipper up at the crosswalk.

She knew she should pull back, be concerned by the ethical implications of their new dynamic. Be concerned that nights without him there had started to feel foreign. But she could handle the guilt of the affair, handle even that she couldn't sleep when he wasn't in her bed. The only thing that concerned her was that their routine had so easily, so seamlessly slid into the easy intimacy that she never let herself want too badly, and now that she had it she wasn't sure how she or her child would handle it going away. She was caught between her desire to keep him there and her desire to keep what they had in their professional lives, so she guiltily kept it all, hoarded it to her without addressing it, because she didn't want it to change. 

They did their best to separate it all, never talking about work inside the apartment, or in her bedroom. But it was there, and she knew that professional disagreements spilled over into their life, the sex rougher, more demanding when they were at odds. When work was going smoothly, or when they were fighting together against the politics of it all, the sex was more affectionate, fun, and they laughed their way through it, trying to be quiet so her son wouldn't wake. And she craved it all, so was as guilty as he was in letting the professional nature of their relationship creep, unspoken, into her bedroom. And she knew it was wrong, knew that this was precisely why there were such rules, but they continued to carry on with it.

She was in his office going over a case with him when she was positive they both felt it, the blurring and melding of their personal and professional lives. Knew that they were going to have to deal with it soon.

She was leaning on his desk, and he was sitting, scribbling on a legal pad while she talked. 

He didn't even glance up, kept scribbling after she'd finished. "You guys heading back out tonight? Because I can't get you a warrant without at least some proof that she's living with him." 

"Yeah." She remembered. "Shoot, I have to get Noah from school. Lucy has an exam." 

"I'll get him." He was still scribbling, searching for something under a pile of papers. 

She reached over without thinking, used her hand to get his attention, laying it on the side of his face. He looked up at her, his expression softening immediately. She rubbed her hand a little. He looked well-rested. Not so ghosted around the eyes.

"Nice try. You have therapy." She continued to stroke his face, let her hand creep into his hair.

"I hate therapy." The humor danced into his eyes. "She's very mean." Smiled when Olivia's laugh burst out of her. They both knew he'd met his match in the older and severe woman that he couldn't seem to intimidate. He hated it. But he continued to go every week because she wanted him to.

She leaned down, laid her mouth on his without really thinking it through, kissed him. It was light, a quick kiss that would have been perfectly acceptable under different circumstances. But they were here. 

He stood, but she saw his eyes glance out his office, toward the elevator, making sure that no one had been in the area. Eased himself between her legs.

"I think I'm going to piss Sharon off because it's fun, go see my boy." He shrugged. "I figure it's better therapy anyway, plus we were in the middle of an important conversation that we never got to finish." He leaned into her, rested his forehead against hers. 

She laughed. "Poor Dr. Lasser. I wouldn't want to put up with you on a weekly basis." 

"You do. On a daily basis."

"I get sex out of the deal. Hopefully Sharon doesn't." She laughed again when he wiggled his eyebrows. Dr. Lasser was easily in her eighties and frankly, Olivia found her terrifying on the one occasion that they had met. She loved her.

"Fine." She kissed him again, quickly. "Go pick up the germ bag." Noah seemed to be rocking a perpetual cold lately. "I'll allow it because I'm shamelessly using you for free childcare. As long as this goes smoothly, I should be home in an hour or two. Make me dinner." She nipped at his lower lip.

"We were going to cook anyway. That crazy kid decided that he's going to be a chef now." He shook his head. "He sees one funny muppet with a chef coat." 

The two of them had been watching that movie last week, when she had arrived home after a long day, barely crawling onto the couch with them before she fell asleep. Rafael didn't wake her until after Noah was in bed, carefully easing her boots off her feet before she started. They went into the bedroom and she hardly registered the kiss he dropped on her cheek as they worked together to get her clothes off. She slept for nine hours that night, completely dreamless, only to wake up with the two of them gone, returning home with bagels, Noah clean and dressed, and fully awake from the brisk weather, the time he'd weaseled at the park. She remembered noticing the shift in her son, a blatant deepening of his confidence. He was growing up, and was more sure of himself, getting stronger under the additional careful attention and love. She felt the same. 

He was playing with the ends of her hair, and she knew she should leave, go back to work, but she didn't feel like moving yet. 

They got separated by the elevator pinging. They jumped apart as the elevator doors slid open, Rollins walking toward them. Rafael's assistant was on lunch so she just swung the door open, peaked in. 

"Hey Barba. You ready Liv? Or are we not doing this now?" Olivia could feel the heat on her face, glanced at Rafael as he busied himself with grabbing his jacket, dumping papers into his briefcase. He looked deceptively calm. 

"Yeah. Let's do it now." She felt guilty and wrong, hating having her favorite secret reflected back at her by the reality of her detective. The real world. 

She followed her out the door, careful not to say goodbye. They never used to do that.

She was in the elevator with Rollins when the dawning of it sank into her stomach. The mixed conversation about her son, about work, about their life.

He'd called Noah his boy.

She pushed it away, refused to think about it.

That had been nearly a month ago, and she felt the shift immediately. They were both more careful now, and she hardly went to his office anymore, afraid of the dawning of this new shift in their relationship. But now she was standing on the courthouse steps feeling sucker punched. And angry at herself. She had let her own needs override reason, override sense. They had been playing at this for nearly a year, and she avoided ever examining it so she could continue to selfishly hoard everything she wanted. 

And he was out. Had quit his job, something she knew went deeper than a simple career change, barely over a year after he'd returned. He was the job as much she was, it was so deeply entwined in who he was, that she knew he would only quit if he physically couldn't do it anymore, if it was actually hurting him.

He didn't even tell her.

She noticed the changes. She knew him so well, so she felt it when she caught him staring at her, knew when he woke up in the middle of the night more and more frequently. He was edgier, impatient. Not angry, but conflicted. They had sex constantly, and there was a new desperate edge to it all, like he couldn't quite get everything he needed from her. She knew it, but she didn't know why, so she desperately tried to give everything she could, loving him in every way she was allowed. His need seemed to seep into her, and she became afflicted with the nearly constant desire to have him inside her, where she was mindless, without any of the nagging fear or thoughts that kept plaguing her. 

He was leaving her and she was so heartbroken, so sad, the betrayal of it prickling at her eyes as she made a beeline to his office on impulse. 

The careless, selfish heartless bastard. 

She stormed past his assistant, and when he stood to halt her she shot her wild anger at him.

"Go home." She kept moving as he fumbled for his coat.

The sight of two paper boxes on the floor next to his desk ripped through her stomach, and the sob just welled up into her chest. So it wasn't a mistake. McCoy hadn't misunderstood, she hadn't misheard.

"What the fuck?" The sob came right up with it, and she forced her breathing to even out.

He looked up from his desk, his eyes briefly resting past her head at his fleeing assistant. He took her in, slowly rose to his feet. "What's the-"

"So it's hard, this isn't easy enough for you, so you're out? I didn't even get a warning?" She was fully crying, and he looked absolutely terrified. 

He quickly made his way around the desk, moved in. "Liv no, I was going to tell you tonight-" 

She shoved him a little, warded him off. 

"How long have you been debating this? Do I even get a say? Were just going to wait, bump into me on the courthouse steps, say everything that I want to hear and then bail out again?" He flinched at the harshness of her words, and she saw the hurt flood into his eyes.

"Answer me. Why would you possibly decide that it was a good idea to ditch me and my son without a warning? I gave him to you, I trusted him with you, you insensitive asshole."

She waited for an answer, saw that he was calmly standing behind his desk, his briefcase open in front of him. He was mad. She had meant to hurt him, hurl her suppressed anger over his abandonment at him.

She threw up her hands. She needed out of the room before she lost it, before she begged him. 

"Nevermind." It came out as a whisper. "This was temporary right? We shouldn't have been doing it at all. I was kidding myself thinking you could change."

He head snapped up, and she was shocked to see the tears sitting in his eyes. He reached into the bag, plucked the small box out and slapped it on the desk. Cocked an eyebrow and stared back at her.

"Oh." It came out watery. "You- oh. Is that- is that an engagement ring?" She was clutching her own stomach, she moved closer to him, her hand lightly touching the box. 

He sniffed, looked at the floor. "Noah said you would ruin this. I have to stop betting against that kid." She could hear the emotion in his voice, wasn't sure if it was love, pain or both.

She felt her chest cave in, moved closer until she was right up on him, put her hands on his chest, pushed his face up so he would look at her. She was crying, but didn't care anymore.

"No. I didn't- crap-" she cried a little, the hysterical laughter bubbling out of her. "I didn't mean to." 

She felt tethered to the ground again when he smiled at her, tentatively holding her hands on his chest and rubbing them between his own.

"There was a whole thing. I was going to say things." He smiled when she laughed, pushed closer to him, until they were around eachother, her hands in his hair. 

She pressed her nose against his. "Say the things. I promise not to interrupt." She did interrupt, pressed her mouth against his, kissed him. 

He pressed his forehead against hers. Looked her in her eyes. "I'm not as smart as you, I actually thought that I was stronger than what you do to me. I'm not." She ran her hands over his face, wiped away some of his tears, ignored her own, pushed closer to him. "I would follow you anywhere, and even when I was stupid enough to put physical distance between us, I was still following you, chasing you to try and reach your goodness. I can't find it anywhere else. I need you. I need you everyday to make me happy. Please take me, let me try to do the same for you."

She was fully sobbing, pressing small kisses onto his face. She laughed, heard the chuckle come out of him, slapped her hand against his chest once.

"Why the hell would you think that it's a good idea to scare me? What if I had said no?"

He ran his nose over her cheek. "You haven't said yes." 

She let the tears fall. Put her hands on his face. "Yes." Watched the smile cross his face, relax the recently ever present tension on his face. He reached behind her without breaking their embrace, snagged the ring box off his desk. Popped it open, pulled the ring from the box. 

"Holy crap." She was shaking, refused to pull away from him. It was gorgeous, a simple silver band with a square diamond embedded into it. 

"Did you actually pick that?" 

He sputtered a laugh out through his tears. "God no. Carmen did. I just had it inscribed." She laughed out loud at his codependency with the young woman who wasn't even his assistant anymore.

She took the ring, looked inside the band.

"Doubt stars, doubt sun, doubt truth. But never doubt my love"

She clutched the ring in her hand, pressing it into her palm so it hurt, grabbed him and desperately kissed him, tried to make him understand that she was as desperately in love with him as he was with her. But she could never express herself the way he did, as though his feelings for her were sitting under his chest, waiting to be spoken whenever she was brave enough to listen.

"What's it from?" She held his face, pressed her forehead against his, felt at home as she always had in this office, with him. 

He grinned, his embarrassed eyes flicking toward the floor. She forced his gaze back up. She wasn't missing any of this.

"Hamlet. Figured it was fitting. We're both insane and plagued by either too much action or not enough." 

She kissed him again, pressed herself against him. Let him take the ring back, slide it onto her finger. "You're such a nerd."

He laughed, both of them still wrapped around eachother. "Yeah. I know."

"I love you." She rubbed his face, felt the acknowledgement of it all right into her toes. Knew she wouldn't be able to say it the way he did, but tried anyway. "I love you so much. I didn't even know how to love myself until you started to. Until I saw everything about you that I love so much. You're stuck with me." 

"Yeah I'm kind of counting on that." 

They stayed in his office, letting it get dark around them. 

They stayed with eachother.


End file.
